comm
select or reject lines common to two files
TLDR
Produce three tab-separated columns: lines only in first file, lines only in second file and common lines
Print only lines common to both files
Print only lines common to both files, reading one file from stdin
Get lines only found in first file, saving the result to a third file
Print lines only found in second file, when the files aren't sorted
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
- --total
-
output a summary
- -z, --zero-terminated
-
line delimiter is NUL, not newline
- --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.
REPORTING BUGS
GNU coreutils online help:
<https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/>
Report any translation bugs to
<https://translationproject.org/team/>
COPYRIGHT
Copyright © 2023 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'
AUTHOR
Written by Richard M. Stallman and David MacKenzie.