cmp — Compare two files

Format

cmp [–Bblsx] [-W option[,option]...] file1 file2 [seek1 [seek2]]

Description

cmp compares two files. If either file name is –, cmp reads the standard input (stdin) for that file. By default, cmp begins the comparison with the first byte of each file. If you specify either seek1 or seek2 (or both), cmp uses it as a byte offset into file1 or file2 (respectively), and comparison begins at that offset instead of at the beginning of the files. The comparison continues, one byte at a time, until a difference is found. At that point, the comparison ends and cmp displays the byte and line number where the difference occurred. cmp numbers bytes and lines beginning with 1.

Options

–B

Disables the automatic conversion of tagged files. This option is ignored if the filecodeset or pgmcodeset options (-W option) are specified.

–b

Compares single blocks at a time. Typically, cmp reads large buffers of data into memory for comparison.

–l

Causes the comparison and display to continue to the end. However, mp does not attempt any resynchronization. cmp displays the byte number (in decimal) and the differing bytes (in octal format) for each difference found.

–s

Suppresses output and returns a nonzero status if the files are not identical.

-W option[,option]...

Specifies z/OS-specific options. The option keywords are case-sensitive. Possible options are:

filecodeset=codeset

Performs text conversion from one code set to another when reading from the file. The coded character set of the file is codeset. codeset can be a code set name known to the system or a numeric coded character set identifier (CCSID). Note that the command iconv -l lists existing CCSIDs along with their corresponding code set names. The filecodeset and pgmcodeset options can be used on files with any file tag.

If pgmcodeset is specified but filecodeset is omitted, then the default file code set is ISO8859-1 even if the file is tagged with a different code set. If neither filecodeset nor pgmcodeset is specified, text conversion will not occur unless automatic conversion is enabled or the _TEXT_CONV environment variable indicates text conversion. For more information about text conversion, see Controlling text conversion for z/OS UNIX shell commands.

If filecodeset or pgmcodeset is specified, then automatic conversion is disabled for this command invocation and the -B option is ignored if it is also specified. See z/OS UNIX System Services Planning for more information about automatic conversion.

When specifying values for filecodeset, use the values that Unicode Service supports. For more information about supported code sets, see z/OS Unicode Services User's Guide and Reference.

pgmcodeset=codeset

Performs text conversion from one code set to another when reading from the file. The coded character set of the program (command) is codeset. codeset can be a code set name known to the system or a numeric coded character set identifier (CCSID). Note that the command iconv -l lists existing CCSIDs along with their corresponding code set names. The filecodeset and pgmcodeset options can be used on files with any file tag.

If filecodeset is specified but pgmcodeset is omitted, then the default program code set is IBM-1047. If neither filecodeset nor pgmcodeset is specified, text conversion will not occur unless automatic conversion is enabled or the _TEXT_CONV environment variable indicates text conversion. For more information about text conversion, see Controlling text conversion for z/OS UNIX shell commands.

Restriction: The only supported values for pgmcodeset are IBM-1047 and 1047.

–x

Displays the differing bytes shown by the –l option in hexadecimal format. Typically, cmp displays them in octal format.

Examples

To compare two files and display the first byte and line number of the difference:
```
cmp myFile01 myFile02
```
To compare two text files containing ASCII characters and display all the differences by byte number and octal byte format in EBCDIC, assuming that:
- The text file is untagged and you do not want to tag it or enable automatic conversion, and
- You cannot alter the tag (for example, you are displaying an untagged public text file or a read-only text file):
```
cmp -l -W filecodeset=ISO8859-1,pgmcodeset=IBM-1047 
    myAsciiFile01 myAsciiFile02
```
To compare two files and display the first byte and line number of the difference, assuming that automatic conversion has been enabled but the files are incorrectly tagged as UTF-8:
```
cmp -B myMisTaggedFile01 myMisTaggedFile02
```

Localization

cmp uses the following localization environment variables:

LANG
LC_ALL
LC_CTYPE
LC_MESSAGES
NLSPATH

See Localization for more information.

Environment variables

cmp uses the following environment variable:

_TEXT_CONV: Contains text conversion information for the command. The text conversion information is not used when either the -B option or the filecodeset or pgmcodeset option (-W option) is specified. For more information about text conversion, see Controlling text conversion for z/OS UNIX shell commands.

Exit values

0

The files were identical

1

The files were not identical

2

Failure due to any of the following:

The command-line option is not correct.
The code set is not valid.

3

Failure due to any of the following:

An error opening or reading an input file
Could not turn off automatic conversion
Could not perform requested text conversion

Messages

Possible error messages include:

EOF on filename: cmp reached the end of the file on the specified file before reaching the end of the file on the other file.

Portability

POSIX.2, X/Open Portability Guide, UNIX systems.

The –B, –b, –W and –x options and the seek pointers are extensions of the POSIX standard.

Related information

comm, diff, uniq