comm(1)

GNU coreutils 8.32

March 2020

coreutils

The basic file, shell and text manipulation utilities of the GNU operating system

coreutils-doc

Documentation for the GNU Core Utilities

NAME

comm - compare two sorted files line by line

SYNOPSIS

comm [\,OPTION\/]... \,FILE1 FILE2\/

DESCRIPTION

Compare sorted files FILE1 and FILE2 line by line.

When FILE1 or FILE2 (not both) is -, read standard input.

With no options, produce three-column output. Column one contains lines unique to FILE1, column two contains lines unique to FILE2, and column three contains lines common to both files.

-1	suppress column 1 (lines unique to FILE1)
-2	suppress column 2 (lines unique to FILE2)
-3	suppress column 3 (lines that appear in both files)
--check-order
	check that the input is correctly sorted, even if all input lines are pairable
--nocheck-order
	do not check that the input is correctly sorted
--output-delimiter=\,STR\/
	separate columns with STR
--total	output a summary
-z, --zero-terminated
	line delimiter is NUL, not newline
--help	display this help and exit
--version
	output version information and exit

Note, comparisons honor the rules specified by ’LC_COLLATE’.

EXAMPLES

comm -12 file1 file2
	Print only lines present in both file1 and file2.
comm -3 file1 file2
	Print lines in file1 not in file2, and vice versa.

AUTHOR

Written by Richard M. Stallman and David MacKenzie.

REPORTING BUGS

GNU coreutils online help: <https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/>
Report any translation bugs to <https://translationproject.org/team/>

COPYRIGHT

Copyright © 2020 Free Software Foundation, Inc. License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <https://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>.
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it. There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.

REFERENCED BY

diff(1plan9), join(1plan9), sdiff(1), diff(1), diff3(1)