Section 1: cmp
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CMP(1) CMP(1)
NAME
cmp (GNU diffutils) - compare two files or byte ranges
SYNOPSIS
cmp [-clsv] [-i NUM] [--help] [--print-chars] [--ignore-
initial=NUM] [--verbose] [--quiet] [--silent] [--version]
-I FILE1 [FILE2 [RANGE1 [RANGE2]]]
DESCRIPTION
The cmp utility compares two files of any type and writes
the results to the standard output. By default, cmp is
silent if the files are the same; if they differ, the byte
and line number at which the first difference occurred is
reported.
In the output, bytes and lines are numbered beginning with
one; however, range inputs are zero-based; see below for
details. A filename of - represents standard input.
The following options are available:
-c, --print-chars
Output the differing bytes as characters, rather
than as octal numbers. Non-printable characters
will be shown in form.
-i NUM, --ignore-initial=NUM
Ignore NUM initial characters from each file. This
is a synonym for specifying NUM NUM as the two
RANGE arguments.
-l, --verbose
Print the byte number (decimal) and the differing
byte values (octal) for each difference.
-s, --quiet, --silent
Print nothing for differing files; return exit sta-
tus only.
-v, --version
Print the diffutils version number.
BYTE RANGES
The two optional arguments RANGE1 and RANGE2 represent
byte ranges to compare within the files. Each range can
be expressed in several ways:
M+N Skip M bytes at the beginning of the input, then
compare a maximum of N bytes.
M-N, M,N
Skip M bytes at the beginning of the input, and
read between bytes M and N, which are both zero-
based.
In either case, both M and N are optional and default to
beginning and end of file, respectively. In addition,
they can be expressed in decimal, octal (0NNN) or hexadec-
imal (0xNNN) form.
GNU Project 1998 September 23 1
CMP(1) CMP(1)
NOTES
The zero-based range numbers may seem inconsistent with
cmp output, which is one-based; this is for compatibility
with some versions of cmp which allow "skip N bytes"
parameters after the filenames; in this context, the N is
zero-based.
DIAGNOSTICS
The cmp utility exits with one of the following values:
0 The files or byte ranges are identical.
1 The files or byte ranges are different; this
includes the case where one file or range is iden-
tical to the first part of the other. In the lat-
ter case, if -s has not been specified, cmp writes
to standard output that EOF was reached in the
shorter file.
>1 An error occurred.
SEE ALSO
diff(1), diff3(1)
STANDARDS
The cmp utility is expected to be POSIX 1003.2-compliant.
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