cmp (Unix)

cmp is a command line utility for computer systems that use Unix or a Unix-like operating system. It compares two files of any type and writes the results to the standard output. By default, cmp is silent if the files are the same; if they differ, the byte and line number at which the first difference occurred is reported.

Switches

cmp may be qualified by the use of command-line switches. The switches supported by the GNU version of cmp are:

-b, --print-bytes: Print the differing bytes. Display control bytes as a '^' followed by a letter of the alphabet and precede bytes that have the high bit set with 'M-' (which stands for "meta").
-i SKIP, --ignore-initial=SKIP: Skip the first SKIP bytes of input.
-i SKIP1:SKIP2, --ignore-initial=SKIP1:SKIP2 : Skip the first SKIP1 bytes of FILE1 and the first SKIP2 bytes of FILE2.
-l, --verbose: Output the (decimal) byte numbers and (octal) values of all differing bytes, instead of the default standard output. Also, output the EOF message if one file is shorter than the other.
-n LIMIT, --bytes=LIMIT: Compare at most LIMIT bytes.
-s, --quiet, --silent: Output nothing; yield exit status only.
-v, --version: Output version info.
--help: Outputs a help file.

Operands that are byte counts are normally decimal, but may be preceded by '0' for octal and '0x' for hexadecimal.

A byte count can be followed by a suffix to specify a multiple of that count; in this case an omitted integer is understood to be 1. A bare size letter, or one followed by 'iB', specifies a multiple using powers of 1024. A size letter followed by 'B' specifies powers of 1000 instead. For example, '-n 4M' and '-n 4MiB' are equivalent to '-n 4194304', whereas '-n 4MB' is equivalent to '-n 4000000'. This notation is upward compatible with the SI prefixes^[1] for decimal multiples and with the IEC 60027-2 prefixes for binary multiples.^[2]

Return values

0 — files are identical
1 — files differ
2 — inaccessible or missing argument

References

External links

cmp: compare two files – Commands & Utilities Reference, The Single UNIX® Specification, Issue 7 from The Open Group
Comparing and Merging Files: Invoking cmp The section of the manual of GNU cmp in the diffutils free manual.

Unix command-line interface programs and shell builtins

File system	cat chmod chown chgrp cksum cmp cp dd du df file fsck fuser ln ls mkdir mount mv pax pwd rm rmdir size split tee touch type umask

Processes	at bg chroot cron fg kill killall nice pgrep pkill ps pstree time top

User environment	clear env exit finger history id logname mesg passwd su sudo uptime talk tput uname w wall who whoami write

Text processing	awk banner basename comm csplit cut diff dirname ed ex fmt fold head iconv join less more nl paste printf sed sort spell strings tail tr uniq vi wc xargs yes

Shell builtins	alias cd echo test unset wait

Networking	dig host ifconfig inetd netcat netstat nslookup ping rdate rlogin route ssh traceroute

Searching	find grep locate whatis whereis

Documentation	apropos help man

Miscellaneous	bc dc cal expr lp od sleep true and false

List of Unix utilities

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cmp (Unix)

Switches

Return values

See also

References

External links