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COMM(1) User Commands COMM(1)

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 that the input is correctly sorted, even if all input lines are pairable
do not check that the input is correctly sorted
separate columns with STR
output a summary
line delimiter is NUL, not newline
display this help and exit
output version information and exit

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

EXAMPLES

Print only lines present in both file1 and 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 © 2022 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.

SEE ALSO

join(1), uniq(1)

Full documentation <https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/comm>
or available locally via: info '(coreutils) comm invocation'

September 2022 GNU coreutils 9.1