Content-type: text/html
cmp [-l|-s] file1 file2
Interfaces documented on this reference page conform to industry standards as follows:
cmp: XPG4, XPG4-UNIX
Refer to the
standards(5)
reference page for more information
about industry standards and associated tags.
Prints the byte number (decimal) and the differing bytes (octal)
for each difference.
Does not print data for differing files; returns only an exit
value.
The path name of a file to be compared.
The path name of a file to be compared.
The cmp command compares two files.
If file1 or file2 is - (dash), standard input is used for that file. It is an error to specify - for both files.
By default, the cmp command prints no information if the files are the same. If the files differ, cmp prints the byte and line number where the difference occurred.
The cmp command also specifies whether one file is an initial subsequence of the other (that is, if the cmp command reads an End-of-File character in one file before finding any differences). Usually, you use the cmp command to compare nontext files and the diff command to compare text files.
Note that bytes and lines reported by
cmp
are numbered
from 1.
The following exit values are returned:
The files are identical.
The files differ. This includes files of different lengths
that are identical in the first part of both files.
An error occurred.
To determine whether two files are identical, enter: cmp prog.o.bak prog.o
The following environment variables affect the execution of
cmp:
Provides a default value for the internationalization variables
that are unset or null. If
LANG
is unset or null, the corresponding value from the default locale is used.
If any of the internationalization variables contain an invalid setting, the
utility behaves as if none of the variables had been defined.
If set to a non-empty string value, overrides the values of
all the other internationalization variables.
Determines the locale for the interpretation of sequences
of bytes of text data as characters (for example, single-byte as opposed to
multibyte characters in arguments).
Determines the locale for the format and contents of diagnostic
messages written to standard error.
Determines the location of message catalogues for the processing
of
LC_MESSAGES.
Commands: comm(1), bdiff(1), diff(1), diff3(1), sdiff(1)
Standards: standards(5)