COMM(1) User Commands COMM(1)

comm - compare two sorted files line by line

comm [OPTION]... FILE1 FILE2

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 that the input is correctly sorted, even if all input lines are pairable
do not check that the input is correctly sorted
separate columns with STR
output a summary
line delimiter is NUL, not newline
display this help and exit
output version information and exit

Note, comparisons honor the rules specified by 'LC_COLLATE'.

Print only lines present in both file1 and file2.
Print lines in file1 not in file2, and vice versa.

Written by Richard M. Stallman and David MacKenzie.

GNU coreutils online help: https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/
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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.

join(1), uniq(1)

Full documentation https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/comm
or available locally via: info '(coreutils) comm invocation'

January 2024 GNU coreutils 9.4