1 .\" You may copy, distribute and modify under the terms of the LDP General
2 .\" Public License as specified in the LICENSE file that comes with the
3 .\" gnumaniak distribution
5 .\" The author kindly requests that no comments regarding the "better"
6 .\" suitability or up-to-date notices of any info documentation alternative
7 .\" is added without contacting him first.
9 .\" (C) 2002 Ragnar Hojland Espinosa <ragnar@ragnar-hojland.com>
12 .\" man pages are NOT obsolete!
13 .\" <ragnar@ragnar-hojland.com>
14 .TH COMM 1 "7 October 2002" "GNU textutils 2.1"
16 \fBcomm\fR \- compare two sorted files line by line
18 .BR "comm " [ \-123 ] " \fIFILE1 " [ \fIFILE2 ]
20 .BR comm " [" \-\-help "] [" \-\-version ]
23 writes to standard output lines that are common, and lines that are unique,
24 between two input files. If a
26 is omitted or if it is a
28 standard input is used as input for that file.
30 With no options, comm' produces three column output. Column one
31 contains lines unique to \fIFILE1\fR, column two contains lines unique to
32 'fIFILE2\fR, and column three contains lines common to both files. Columns
33 are separated by <TAB>.
37 Suppress output of column one.
40 Suppress output of column two.
43 Suppress output of column three.
46 Print a usage message on standard output and exit successfully.
49 Print version information on standard output then exit successfully.
51 Unlike some other comparison utilities, \fBcomm\fR has an exit status
52 that does not depend on the result of the comparison. Upon normal
53 completion \fBcomm\fR produces an exit code of zero. If there is an error
54 it exits with nonzero status.
56 Report bugs to bug-textutils@gnu.org.
58 Man page by Ragnar Hojland Espinosa <ragnar@ragnar-hojland.com>