comm(1) — Linux manual pages

Linux manual pages	Section 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−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
−−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: <http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/>

Report comm translation bugs to <http://translationproject.org/team/>