11. Invoking cmp

The cmp command compares two files, and if they differ, tells the first byte and line number where they differ. Its arguments are as follows:

cmp options... from-file [to-file]

The file name `-' is always the standard input. cmp also uses the standard input if one file name is omitted.

An exit status of 0 means no differences were found, 1 means some differences were found, and 2 means trouble.

11.1 Options to cmp

Below is a summary of all of the options that GNU cmp accepts. Most options have two equivalent names, one of which is a single letter preceded by `-', and the other of which is a long name preceded by `--'. Multiple single letter options (unless they take an argument) can be combined into a single command line word: `-cl' is equivalent to `-c -l'.

`-c'

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

`--ignore-initial=bytes'

Ignore any differences in the the first bytes bytes of the input files. Treat files with fewer than bytes bytes as if they are empty.

`-l'

Print the (decimal) offsets and (octal) values of all differing bytes.

`--print-chars'

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

`--quiet'

`-s'

`--silent'

Do not print anything; only return an exit status indicating whether the files differ.

`--verbose'

Print the (decimal) offsets and (octal) values of all differing bytes.

`-v'

`--version'

Output the version number of cmp.

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