comm

Select or reject lines common to two files. Both files must be sorted.

• Produce three tab-separated columns: lines only in first file, lines only in second file and common lines:

comm {file1} {file2}

• Print only lines common to both files:

comm -12 {file1} {file2}

• Print only lines common to both files, reading one file from stdin:

cat {file1} | comm -12 - {file2}

• Get lines only found in first file, saving the result to a third file:

comm -23 {file1} {file2} > {file1_only}

• Print lines only found in second file, when the files aren't sorted:

comm -13 <(sort {file1}) <(sort {file2})

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