Cmp

Linux cmp command

On Unix-like operating systems, the cmp command is used to compare two files byte by byte. If a difference is found, it reports the byte and line number where the first difference is found. If no differences are found, by default, cmp returns no output.

This document covers the GNU/Linux version of cmp.

Syntax

cmp OPTION... FILE1 [FILE2 [SKIP1 SKIP2]]

Options

The optional SKIP1 and SKIP2 specify the number of bytes to skip at the beginning of each file (zero by default).

SKIP values may be followed by the following multiplicative suffixes:

kB

kilobytes

1000

K

kibibytes

1024

MB

megabytes

1,000,000

M

mebibytes

1,048,576

GB

gigabytes

1,000,000,000

G

gibibytes

1,073,741,824

...and so on for T, P, E, Z, Y.

If a FILE is specified as '-' or not specified, data is read from standard input. cmp's exit status is 0 if inputs are the same, 1 if different, or 2 if the program encounters a problem.

Additional options:

-b, --print-bytes

Print differing bytes.

-i, --ignore-initial=SKIP

Skip first SKIP bytes of both files.

-i, --ignore-initial=SKIP1:SKIP2

Skip first SKIP1 bytes of FILE1 and first SKIP2 bytes of FILE2.

-l, --verbose

Output byte numbers and differing byte values.

-n, --bytes=LIMIT

Compare at most LIMIT bytes.

-s, --quiet, --silent

Suppress all normal output.

--help

Display a help message and exit.

-v, --version

Output version information and exit.

Examples

cmp file1.txt file2.txt

Compares file1 to file2, reading each file byte-by-byte and comparing them until one of the byte pairs is not equal. When a difference is found, it will output the location in the file where the difference was found, and exit. Example output:

file.txt file2.txt differ: char 1011, line 112

Related commands

comm — Compare two sorted files line by line.

diff — Identify the differences between

two files.

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