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. 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 lines unique to FILE1 -2 suppress lines unique to FILE2 -3 suppress 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 --help display this help and exit --version output version information and exit AUTHOR Written by Richard M. Stallman and David MacKenzie. REPORTING BUGS Report comm bugs to bug-coreutils@gnu.org GNU coreutils home page: General help using GNU software: COPYRIGHT Copyright © 2009 Free Software Foundation, Inc. License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later . This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it. There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law. SEE ALSO The full documentation for comm is maintained as a Texinfo manual. If the info and comm programs are properly installed at your site, the command info coreutils 'comm invocation' should give you access to the complete manual. GNU coreutils 7.2 March 2009 COMM(1)