activity="compare output"
-diff -b -B $TEMPDIR/pspp.list - << EOF
+perl -pi -e s/^\s*\$//g $TEMPDIR/pspp.list
+diff -b $TEMPDIR/pspp.list - << EOF | perl -e 's/^\s*$//g'
1.1 DATA LIST. Reading free-form data from file $TEMPDIR/data-list.data.
+--------+------+
|Variable|Format|