COMM(1) User Commands COMM(1)
NAME
comm - compare two sorted files line by line
SYNOPSIS
comm [OPTION]... FILE1 FILE2
DESCRIPTION
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'.
EXAMPLES
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.
AUTHOR
Written by Richard M. Stallman and David MacKenzie.
REPORTING BUGS
GNU coreutils online help: <https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/>
Report any translation bugs to <https://translationproject.org/team/>
SEE ALSO
join(1), uniq(1)
Full documentation <https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/comm>
or available locally via: info '(coreutils) comm invocation'
Packaged by Debian (9.7-3)
Copyright © 2025 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <https://gnu.org/li-
censes/gpl.html>.
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.
There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.
GNU coreutils 9.7 June 2025 COMM(1)
Generated by dwww version 1.16 on Tue Dec 16 04:29:31 CET 2025.