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PROLOG
This manual page is part of the POSIX Programmer's Manual. The Linux implementation of this interface
may differ (consult the corresponding Linux manual page for details of Linux behavior), or the interface
may not be implemented on Linux.
NAME
cmp — compare two files
SYNOPSIS
cmp [-l|-s] file1 file2
DESCRIPTION
The cmp utility shall compare two files. The cmp utility shall write no output if the files are the same.
Under default options, if they differ, it shall write to standard output the byte and line number at
which the first difference occurred. Bytes and lines shall be numbered beginning with 1.
OPTIONS
The cmp utility shall conform to the Base Definitions volume of POSIX.1‐2017, Section 12.2, Utility
Syntax Guidelines.
The following options shall be supported:
-l (Lowercase ell.) Write the byte number (decimal) and the differing bytes (octal) for each
difference.
-s Write nothing to standard output or standard error when files differ; indicate differing files
through exit status only. It is unspecified whether a diagnostic message is written to
standard error when an error is encountered; if a message is not written, the error is
indicated through exit status only.
OPERANDS
The following operands shall be supported:
file1 A pathname of the first file to be compared. If file1 is '-', the standard input shall be used.
file2 A pathname of the second file to be compared. If file2 is '-', the standard input shall be
used.
If both file1 and file2 refer to standard input or refer to the same FIFO special, block special, or
character special file, the results are undefined.
STDIN
The standard input shall be used only if the file1 or file2 operand refers to standard input. See the
INPUT FILES section.
INPUT FILES
The input files can be any file type.
ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
The following environment variables shall affect the execution of cmp:
LANG Provide a default value for the internationalization variables that are unset or null. (See the
Base Definitions volume of POSIX.1‐2017, Section 8.2, Internationalization Variables for the
precedence of internationalization variables used to determine the values of locale
categories.)
LC_ALL If set to a non-empty string value, override the values of all the other internationalization
variables.
LC_CTYPE Determine the locale for the interpretation of sequences of bytes of text data as characters
(for example, single-byte as opposed to multi-byte characters in arguments).
LC_MESSAGES
Determine the locale that should be used to affect the format and contents of diagnostic
messages written to standard error and informative messages written to standard output.
NLSPATH Determine the location of message catalogs for the processing of LC_MESSAGES.
ASYNCHRONOUS EVENTS
Default.
STDOUT
In the POSIX locale, results of the comparison shall be written to standard output. When no options are
used, the format shall be:
"%s %s differ: char %d, line %d\n", file1, file2,
<byte number>, <line number>
When the -l option is used, the format shall be:
"%d %o %o\n", <byte number>, <differing byte>,
<differing byte>
for each byte that differs. The first <differing byte> number is from file1 while the second is from
file2. In both cases, <byte number> shall be relative to the beginning of the file, beginning with 1.
No output shall be written to standard output when the -s option is used.
STDERR
The standard error shall be used only for diagnostic messages. If the -l option is used and file1 and
file2 differ in length, or if the -s option is not used and file1 and file2 are identical for the entire
length of the shorter file, in the POSIX locale the following diagnostic message shall be written:
"cmp: EOF on %s%s\n", <name of shorter file>, <additional info>
The <additional info> field shall either be null or a string that starts with a <blank> and contains no
<newline> characters. Some implementations report on the number of lines in this case.
If the -s option is used and an error occurs, it is unspecified whether a diagnostic message is written
to standard error.
OUTPUT FILES
None.
EXTENDED DESCRIPTION
None.
EXIT STATUS
The following exit values shall be returned:
0 The files are identical.
1 The files are different; this includes the case where one file is identical to the first part of
the other.
>1 An error occurred.
CONSEQUENCES OF ERRORS
Default.
The following sections are informative.
APPLICATION USAGE
Although input files to cmp can be any type, the results might not be what would be expected on character
special device files or on file types not described by the System Interfaces volume of POSIX.1‐2017.
Since this volume of POSIX.1‐2017 does not specify the block size used when doing input, comparisons of
character special files need not compare all of the data in those files.
For files which are not text files, line numbers simply reflect the presence of a <newline>, without any
implication that the file is organized into lines.
Since the behavior of -s differs between implementations as to whether error messages are written, the
only way to ensure consistent behavior of cmp when -s is used is to redirect standard error to /dev/null.
If error messages are wanted, instead of using -s standard output should be redirected to /dev/null, and
anything written to standard error should be discarded if the exit status is 1. For example:
silent_cmp() {
# compare files with no output except error messages
message=$(cmp "$@" 2>&1 >/dev/null)
status=$?
case $status in
(0|1) ;;
(*) printf '%s\n' "$message" ;;
esac
return $status
}
EXAMPLES
None.
RATIONALE
The global language in Section 1.4, Utility Description Defaults indicates that using two mutually-
exclusive options together produces unspecified results. Some System V implementations consider the
option usage:
cmp -l -s ...
to be an error. They also treat:
cmp -s -l ...
as if no options were specified. Both of these behaviors are considered bugs, but are allowed.
The word char in the standard output format comes from historical usage, even though it is actually a
byte number. When cmp is supported in other locales, implementations are encouraged to use the word byte
or its equivalent in another language. Users should not interpret this difference to indicate that the
functionality of the utility changed between locales.
Some implementations report on the number of lines in the identical-but-shorter file case. This is
allowed by the inclusion of the <additional info> fields in the output format. The restriction on having
a leading <blank> and no <newline> characters is to make parsing for the filename easier. It is
recognized that some filenames containing white-space characters make parsing difficult anyway, but the
restriction does aid programs used on systems where the names are predominantly well behaved.
FUTURE DIRECTIONS
Future versions of this standard may require that diagnostic messages are written to standard error when
the -s option is specified.
SEE ALSO
comm, diff
The Base Definitions volume of POSIX.1‐2017, Chapter 8, Environment Variables, Section 12.2, Utility
Syntax Guidelines
COPYRIGHT
Portions of this text are reprinted and reproduced in electronic form from IEEE Std 1003.1-2017, Standard
for Information Technology -- Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX), The Open Group Base
Specifications Issue 7, 2018 Edition, Copyright (C) 2018 by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics
Engineers, Inc and The Open Group. In the event of any discrepancy between this version and the original
IEEE and The Open Group Standard, the original IEEE and The Open Group Standard is the referee document.
The original Standard can be obtained online at http://www.opengroup.org/unix/online.html .
Any typographical or formatting errors that appear in this page are most likely to have been introduced
during the conversion of the source files to man page format. To report such errors, see
https://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/reporting_bugs.html .
IEEE/The Open Group 2017 CMP(1POSIX)