GNU

Section: User Commands (1)
Updated: January 2021
Page Index

NAME

GNU cmp - compare two files byte by byte

SYNOPSIS

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

DESCRIPTION

Compare two files byte by byte.

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

Mandatory arguments to long options are mandatory for short options too.

-b, --print-bytes: print differing bytes
-i, --ignore-initial=SKIP: skip first SKIP bytes of both inputs
-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 this help and exit
-v, --version: output version information and exit

SKIP values may be followed by the following multiplicative suffixes: kB 1000, K 1024, MB 1,000,000, M 1,048,576, GB 1,000,000,000, G 1,073,741,824, and so on for T, P, E, Z, Y.

If a FILE is '-' or missing, read standard input. Exit status is 0 if inputs are the same, 1 if different, 2 if trouble.

AUTHOR

Written by Torbjorn Granlund and David MacKenzie.

REPORTING BUGS

Report bugs to: bug-diffutils@gnu.org
GNU diffutils home page: <http://www.gnu.org/software/diffutils/>
General help using GNU software: <https://www.gnu.org/gethelp/>

COPYRIGHT

Copyright © 2018 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.

GNU