Linux cmp command - compare two files by bytes

Linux cmp command: compare two files by bytes

Linux cmp command Function Description

Use the cmp command to compare two files by bytes and see if the files differ.

Linux cmp command Syntax

cmp [option] [file1] [file2 [Byte count1 [Byte count2]]]

The meaning of each option in the command is shown in the table:

Option	Description
-l	Output the number of bytes and values of all different bytes
-n <Byte count>	Compare by specified minimum bytes
-b	Display different bytes
-i <Byte count>	Skip the first few bytes of the loser
-i <Byte Count1>:<Byte Count2>	Skip the first few bytes of file 1 and file 2
-s	No error message is displayed

Linux cmp command Demo

Compare apidemos.com.sort.txt and apidemos.com.txt files by bytes

cmp apidemos.com.sort.txt apidemos.com.txt

Output:

Compare /root/ab and /root/ac files by bytes

[root@rhel ～]# cmp /root/ab /root/ac
/root/ab /root/ac differ: byte 6, line 2

Compare /root/ab and /root/ac files by byte, skipping the first 2 bytes of input

[root@rhel ～]# cmp -i 2 /root/ab /root/ac

Compare /root/ab and /root/ac files by byte, skipping the first 1 byte of file 1 and the first 2 bytes of file 2

[root@rhel ～]# cmp -i 1:2 /root/ab /root/ac

Compare /root/ab and /root/ac files by byte, output byte count and value.

[root@rhel ～]# cmp -l /root/ab /root/ac
6 12144
cmp: EOF on /root/ab