Cmp (Unix)

Switches

cmp may be qualified by the use of command-line switches. The switches supported by the GNU version of cmp are:

-b, --print-bytes 

Print the differing bytes. Display control bytes as a '^' followed by a letter of the alphabet and precede bytes that have the high bit set with 'M-' (which stands for "meta").

-i SKIP, --ignore-initial=SKIP 

Skip the first SKIP bytes of input.

-i SKIP1:SKIP2, --ignore-initial=SKIP1:SKIP2 

Skip the first SKIP1 bytes of FILE1 and the first SKIP2 bytes of FILE2.

-l, --verbose 

Output the (decimal) byte numbers and (octal) values of all differing bytes, instead of the default standard output. Also, output the EOF message if one file is shorter than the other.

-n LIMIT, --bytes=LIMIT 

Compare at most LIMIT bytes.

-s, --quiet, --silent 

Output nothing; yield exit status only.

-v, --version 

Output version info.

--help 

Outputs a help file.

Operands that are byte counts are normally decimal, but may be preceded by '0' for octal and '0x' for hexadecimal.

A byte count can be followed by a suffix to specify a multiple of that count; in this case an omitted integer is understood to be 1. A bare size letter, or one followed by 'iB', specifies a multiple using powers of 1024. A size letter followed by 'B' specifies powers of 1000 instead. For example, '-n 4M' and '-n 4MiB' are equivalent to '-n 4194304', whereas '-n 4MB' is equivalent to '-n 4000000'. This notation is upward compatible with the SI prefixes for decimal multiples and with the IEC 60027-2 prefixes for binary multiples.

Return values

0 — files are identical

1 — files differ

2 — inaccessible or missing argument