The comm command in Unix is a utility that is used to compare two files. It shows common lines in one column and differing lines in separate columns for left and right files. This functionally is similar to diff. Filiation of Unix and Unix-like systems Unix (officially trademarked as UNIXâ„¢) is a computer operating system originally developed in the 1960s and 1970s by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, and Douglas McIlroy. ... In computing, diff is a file comparison utility that outputs the differences between two files. ...

One notable difference between comm and diff is that comm will not try to indicate that a line has "changed" between the two files; lines are either shown in the "from file #1", "from file #2", or "in both" columns. This feature can be especially useful if one wishes two lines to be considered different even if they only have subtle differences.

comm also has options to suppress any of the three columns which is useful for a scripting.

See also

• cmp
• Comparison of file comparison tools
• List of Unix programs

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External links

• [1] The program's manpage