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.

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

Report comm bugs to bug-coreutils@gnu.org
GNU coreutils home page: <http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/>
General help using GNU software: <http://www.gnu.org/gethelp/>
Report comm translation bugs to <http://translationproject.org/team/>

COPYRIGHT

Copyright (C) 2010 Free Software Foundation, Inc. License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <http://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)

The full documentation for comm is maintained as a Texinfo manual. If the info and comm programs are properly installed at your site, the command

info coreutils 'comm invocation'

should give you access to the complete manual.

GNU coreutils 8.5 April 2010 COMM(1)