NAME¶

comm - Compare two sorted files 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.

SYNOPSIS¶

comm [-1 ] [-2 ] [-3 ] [--output-delimiter] [-z|--zero-terminated] [--total] [--check-order] [--nocheck-order] [-h|--help] [-V|--version] <FILE1> <FILE2>

DESCRIPTION¶

Compare two sorted files 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.

OPTIONS¶

-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)

--output-delimiter <STR>

separate columns with STR

-z, --zero-terminated

line delimiter is NUL, not newline

--total

output a summary

--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

-h, --help

Print help

-V, --version

Print version

<FILE1>

<FILE2>

VERSION¶

v(uutils coreutils) 0.7.0

EXAMPLES¶

Produce three tab-separated columns: lines only in first file, lines only in second file, and common lines:

comm file1 file2

Print only lines common to both files:

comm -12 file1 file2

Print only lines common to both files, reading one file from `stdin`:

cat file1 | comm -12 - file2

Get lines only found in first file, saving the result to a third file:

comm -23 file1 file2 > file1_only

Print lines only found in second file, when the files aren't sorted:

comm -13 <(sort file1) <(sort file2)

The examples are provided by the tldr-pages project <https://tldr.sh> under the CC BY 4.0 License. Please note that, as uutils is a work in progress, some examples might fail.