Unix Third Edition: Visual Quickstart Guide

Comparing Files with cmp

Suppose you’ve been working on the dearliza file and you want to know how it differs from the dearhenry file. Using cmp, you can compare the two files as shown in Code Listing 6.13.

Code Listing 6.13. cmp gives just the facts about the first difference between two files.

[ejr@hobbes manipulate]$ cmp dearliza → dearhenry dearliza dearhenry differ: char 20, line 2 [ejr@hobbes manipulate]$

Code Listing 6.14. cmp also tells you if the files matched until one ended (EOF stands for “end of file”).

[ejr@hobbes manipulate]$ cmp limerick → limericks cmp: EOF on limerick [ejr@hobbes manipulate]$

To compare files with cmp:

• cmp dearliza dearhenry

  At the shell prompt, type cmp followed by both filenames. As Code Listing 6.13 ...