.\" DO NOT MODIFY THIS FILE! It was generated by help2man 1.48.5. .TH COMM "1" "January 2024" "GNU coreutils 9.4" "User Commands" .SH NAME comm \- compare two sorted files line by line .SH SYNOPSIS .B comm [\fI\,OPTION\/\fR]... \fI\,FILE1 FILE2\/\fR .SH DESCRIPTION .\" Add any additional description here .PP Compare sorted files FILE1 and FILE2 line by line. .PP When FILE1 or FILE2 (not both) is \-, read standard input. .PP 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. .TP \fB\-1\fR suppress column 1 (lines unique to FILE1) .TP \fB\-2\fR suppress column 2 (lines unique to FILE2) .TP \fB\-3\fR suppress column 3 (lines that appear in both files) .TP \fB\-\-check\-order\fR check that the input is correctly sorted, even if all input lines are pairable .TP \fB\-\-nocheck\-order\fR do not check that the input is correctly sorted .TP \fB\-\-output\-delimiter\fR=\fI\,STR\/\fR separate columns with STR .TP \fB\-\-total\fR output a summary .TP \fB\-z\fR, \fB\-\-zero\-terminated\fR line delimiter is NUL, not newline .TP \fB\-\-help\fR display this help and exit .TP \fB\-\-version\fR output version information and exit .PP Note, comparisons honor the rules specified by 'LC_COLLATE'. .SH EXAMPLES .TP comm \-12 file1 file2 Print only lines present in both file1 and file2. .TP comm \-3 file1 file2 Print lines in file1 not in file2, and vice versa. .SH AUTHOR Written by Richard M. Stallman and David MacKenzie. .SH "REPORTING BUGS" GNU coreutils online help: .br Report any translation bugs to .SH COPYRIGHT Copyright \(co 2023 Free Software Foundation, Inc. License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later . .br This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it. There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law. .SH "SEE ALSO" \fBjoin\fP(1), \fBuniq\fP(1) .PP .br Full documentation .br or available locally via: info \(aq(coreutils) comm invocation\(aq