COMM

comm − compare two sorted files line by line

comm [OPTION]... FILE1 FILE2

Compare sorted files FILE1 and FILE2 line by line.

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−order

check that the input is correctly sorted, even if all input lines are pairable

−−nocheck−order

do not check that the input is correctly sorted

−−output−delimiter=STR

separate columns with STR

−−help

display this help and exit

−−version

output version information and exit

Note, comparisons honor the rules specified by ‘LC_COLLATE’.

comm −12 file1 file2

Print only lines present in both file1 and file2.

comm −3

file1 file2 Print lines in file1 not in file2, and vice versa.

Written by Richard M. Stallman and David MacKenzie.

Report comm bugs to bug−coreutils@gnu.org
GNU coreutils home page: <http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/>
General help using GNU software: <http://www.gnu.org/gethelp/>
Report comm translation bugs to <http://translationproject.org/team/>

Copyright © 2010 Free Software Foundation, Inc. License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <http://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)

The full documentation for comm is maintained as a Texinfo manual. If the info and comm programs are properly installed at your site, the command

info coreutils 'comm invocation'

should give you access to the complete manual.