cmp(1) — Linux manual page

CMP(1)                        User Commands                       CMP(1)

NAME         top

       cmp - compare two files byte by byte

SYNOPSIS         top

       cmp [OPTION]... FILE1 [FILE2 [SKIP1 [SKIP2]]]

DESCRIPTION         top

       Compare two files byte by byte.

       The optional SKIP1 and SKIP2 specify the number of bytes to skip
       at the beginning of each file (zero by default).

       Mandatory arguments to long options are mandatory for short
       options too.

       -b, --print-bytes
              print differing bytes

       -i, --ignore-initial=SKIP
              skip first SKIP bytes of both inputs

       -i, --ignore-initial=SKIP1:SKIP2
              skip first SKIP1 bytes of FILE1 and first SKIP2 bytes of
              FILE2

       -l, --verbose
              output byte numbers and differing byte values

       -n, --bytes=LIMIT
              compare at most LIMIT bytes

       -s, --quiet, --silent
              suppress all normal output

       --help display this help and exit

       -v, --version
              output version information and exit

       SKIP values may be followed by the following multiplicative
       suffixes: kB 1000, K 1024, MB 1,000,000, M 1,048,576, GB
       1,000,000,000, G 1,073,741,824, and so on for T, P, E, Z, Y.

       If a FILE is '-' or missing, read standard input.  Exit status is
       0 if inputs are the same, 1 if different, 2 if trouble.

AUTHOR         top

       Written by Torbjorn Granlund and David MacKenzie.

REPORTING BUGS         top

       Report bugs to: bug-diffutils@gnu.org
       GNU diffutils home page:
       <https://www.gnu.org/software/diffutils/>
       General help using GNU software: <https://www.gnu.org/gethelp/>

COPYRIGHT         top

       Copyright © 2023 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.

SEE ALSO         top

       diff(1), diff3(1), sdiff(1)

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

              info cmp

       should give you access to the complete manual.

COLOPHON         top

       This page is part of the diffutils (GNU diff utilities) project.
       Information about the project can be found at 
       ⟨http://savannah.gnu.org/projects/diffutils/⟩.  If you have a bug
       report for this manual page, send it to bug-diffutils@gnu.org.
       This page was obtained from the project's upstream Git repository
       ⟨git://git.savannah.gnu.org/diffutils.git⟩ on 2024-06-14.  (At
       that time, the date of the most recent commit that was found in
       the repository was 2024-06-11.)  If you discover any rendering
       problems in this HTML version of the page, or you believe there
       is a better or more up-to-date source for the page, or you have
       corrections or improvements to the information in this COLOPHON
       (which is not part of the original manual page), send a mail to
       man-pages@man7.org

diffutils 3.10.207-774b       December 2023                       CMP(1)

Pages that refer to this page: diff(1),  diff3(1),  grep(1),  sdiff(1)

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