title: Compare multiline strings in bash variables
body: <p>I have a script with two multiline strings. I'd like to know if they are equal. I haven't found a way to do this, because while comparing is easy, passing the value of the variables to the comparison thingamajig isn't. I haven't had success piping it to diff, but it could be my ineptitude (many of the things I've tried resulted in 'File name too long' errors). A workaround would be to replace newlines by some rare character, but it meets much the same problem. Any ideas?</p>