Comm is the command in Mac OS X if you want to compare the contents of two files through the command line.
The usage is as follows :
comm -switch file1 file2
where -switch can be any of the following :
-1 : This will not display the lines which are UNIQUELY present only in File1
-2 : This will not display the lines which are UNIQUELY present only in File2
-3 : This will not display the lines which are COMMON in both the files. i.e it will only display the unique lines from File1 and the File2
-i : This will basically display 3 columns. The 1st column will display lines which are UNIQUELY present only in File1. The 2nd column will display lines which are UNIQUELY present only in File2. And the 3rd column will display lines which are COMMON in both the files.
For eg:
we have taken two Text files for comparison, the contents of which are as follows :
TextFile1.txt
ABC
DEF
GHI
JKL
MNO
PQR
STU
VWX
YZ
TextFile2.txt
ABCD
DEFG
GHI
JKL
MNO
PQR
STU
VWXYZ
YZ
------ Usage 1 ------
------ Usage 2 ------
------ Usage 3 ------
The usage is as follows :
comm -switch file1 file2
where -switch can be any of the following :
-1 : This will not display the lines which are UNIQUELY present only in File1
-2 : This will not display the lines which are UNIQUELY present only in File2
-3 : This will not display the lines which are COMMON in both the files. i.e it will only display the unique lines from File1 and the File2
-i : This will basically display 3 columns. The 1st column will display lines which are UNIQUELY present only in File1. The 2nd column will display lines which are UNIQUELY present only in File2. And the 3rd column will display lines which are COMMON in both the files.
For eg:
we have taken two Text files for comparison, the contents of which are as follows :
TextFile1.txt
ABC
DEF
GHI
JKL
MNO
PQR
STU
VWX
YZ
TextFile2.txt
ABCD
DEFG
GHI
JKL
MNO
PQR
STU
VWXYZ
YZ
------ Usage 1 ------
comm -1 TextFile1.txt TextFile2.txt
ABCD
DEFG
GHI
JKL
MNO
PQR
STU
VWXYZ
YZ
------ Usage 2 ------
comm -2 TextFile1.txt TextFile2.txt
ABC
DEF
GHI
JKL
MNO
PQR
STU
VWX
YZ
------ Usage 3 ------
comm -3 TextFile1.txt TextFile2.txt
ABC
ABCD
DEF
DEFG
VWX
VWXYZ
------ Usage 4 ------
comm -i TextFile1.txt TextFile2.txt
ABC
ABCD
DEF
DEFG
GHI
JKL
MNO
PQR
STU
VWX
VWXYZ