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comm(1)

HP-UX 11i Version 3: February 2007
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NAME

comm — select or reject lines common to two sorted files

SYNOPSIS

comm [- [123]] file1 file2

DESCRIPTION

comm reads file1 and file2, which should be ordered in increasing collating sequence (see sort(1) and Environment Variables below), and produces a three-column output:

Column 1:

Lines that appear only in file1,

Column 2:

Lines that appear only in file2,

Column 3:

Lines that appear in both files.

If - is used for file1 or file2, the standard input is used.

Options 1, 2, or 3 suppress printing of the corresponding column. Thus comm -12 prints only the lines common to the two files; comm -23 prints only lines in the first file but not in the second; comm -123 does nothing useful.

EXTERNAL INFLUENCES

Environment Variables

LC_COLLATE determines the collating sequence comm expects from the input files.

LC_MESSAGES determines the language in which messages are displayed.

If LC_MESSAGES is not specified in the environment or is set to the empty string, the value of LANG determines the language in which messages are displayed. If LC_COLLATE is not specified in the environment or is set to the empty string, the value of LANG is used as a default. If LANG is not specified or is set to the empty string, a default of ``C'' (see lang(5)) is used instead of LANG. If any internationalization variable contains an invalid setting, comm behaves as if all internationalization variables are set to ``C''. See environ(5).

International Code Set Support

Single- and multi-byte character code sets are supported.

EXAMPLES

The following examples assume that file1 and file2 have been ordered in the collating sequence defined by the LC_COLLATE or LANG environment variable.

Print all lines common to file1 and file2 (in other words, print column 3):

comm -12 file1 file2

Print all lines that appear in file1 but not in file2 (in other words, print column 1):

comm -23 file1 file2

Print all lines that appear in file2 but not in file1 (in other words, print column 2):

comm -13 file1 file2

STANDARDS CONFORMANCE

comm: SVID2, SVID3, XPG2, XPG3, XPG4, POSIX.2

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