Why does diff differ?

I retrieved the same gzip file, once as file1.gz, the second as file2.gz.
When I diff file1.gz with file2.gz I get the message binary files differ.
If I ungzip file1.gz and diff it to the ungzip of file2.gz they are the same. (No difference)

The only hint, or possibly wild goose chase I seem to have, is that retrieval process did a move, in that if I do a file on file1.gz and file2.gz I see

bash-3.2$ file /tmp/1.gz
/tmp/1.gz: gzip compressed data, was "eenfIAAa11931", from Unix, last modified: Wed Aug 25 07:11:26 2010
bash-3.2$ file /tmp/2.gz
/tmp/2.gz: gzip compressed data, was "eenfZAAa09151", from Unix, last modified: Wed Aug 25 07:13:03 2010

Is some sort of Meta data getting in the way of diff? Why does it differ?

Any thoughts would be appreciated.
John

First, diff is only meant for text file comparison. Second, you're checking the files in an incorrect manner..

For example

So the gzipped files are different based on their md5sums, but what matters is the uncompressed content is the exact same..

Regards

Thanks for the reply. I tried your example as well. It behaves as you say. I believed some how OSX was behaving differently than Linux, but it is the same there as well.

I really thought it was the same and I now understand why.

Thanks for your help. I'm very appreciative.

John