comm - Man Page

• Produce three tab-separated columns: lines only in first file, lines only in second file and common lines: comm file1 file2
• Print only lines common to both files: comm -12 file1 file2
• Print only lines common to both files, reading one file from stdin: cat file1 | comm -12 - file2
• Get lines only found in first file, saving the result to a third file: comm -23 file1 file2 > file1_only
• Print lines only found in second file, when the files aren't sorted: comm -13 <(sort file1) <(sort file2)

tldr.sh

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-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

--total

output a summary

-z,  --zero-terminated

line delimiter is NUL, not newline

--help

display this help and exit

--version

output version information and exit

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.

GNU coreutils online help: <https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/>
Report any translation bugs to <https://translationproject.org/team/>

Copyright © 2024 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'

join(1), uniq(1).