12.1 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: ‘-bl’ is equivalent to ‘-b -l’.

‘-b’

‘--print-bytes’

Print the differing bytes. Display control bytes as a ‘^’ followed by a letter of the alphabet and precede bytes that have the high bit set with ‘M-’ (which stands for “meta”).

‘--help’

Output a summary of usage and then exit.

‘-i skip’

‘--ignore-initial=skip’

Ignore any differences in the first skip bytes of the input files. Treat files with fewer than skip bytes as if they are empty. If skip is of the form ‘from-skip:to-skip’, skip the first from-skip bytes of the first input file and the first to-skip bytes of the second.

‘-l’

‘--verbose’

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

‘-n count’

‘--bytes=count’

Compare at most count input bytes.

‘-s’

‘--quiet’

‘--silent’

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

‘-v’

‘--version’

Output version information and then exit.

In the above table, operands that are byte counts are normally decimal, but may be preceded by ‘0’ for octal and ‘0x’ for hexadecimal.

A byte count can be followed by a suffix to specify a multiple of that count; in this case an omitted integer is understood to be 1. A bare size letter, or one followed by ‘iB’, specifies a multiple using powers of 1024. A size letter followed by ‘B’ specifies powers of 1000 instead. For example, ‘-n 4M’ and ‘-n 4MiB’ are equivalent to ‘-n 4194304’, whereas ‘-n 4MB’ is equivalent to ‘-n 4000000’. This notation is upward compatible with the SI prefixes for decimal multiples and with the IEC 60027-2 prefixes for binary multiples.

The following suffixes are defined. Large sizes like 1Y may be rejected by your computer due to limitations of its arithmetic.

‘kB’

kilobyte: 10^3 = 1000.

‘k’

‘K’

‘KiB’

kibibyte: 2^10 = 1024. ‘K’ is special: the SI prefix is ‘k’ and the IEC 60027-2 prefix is ‘Ki’, but tradition and POSIX use ‘k’ to mean ‘KiB’.

‘MB’

megabyte: 10^6 = 1,000,000.

‘M’

‘MiB’

mebibyte: 2^20 = 1,048,576.

‘GB’

gigabyte: 10^9 = 1,000,000,000.

‘G’

‘GiB’

gibibyte: 2^30 = 1,073,741,824.

‘TB’

terabyte: 10^12 = 1,000,000,000,000.

‘T’

‘TiB’

tebibyte: 2^40 = 1,099,511,627,776.

‘PB’

petabyte: 10^15 = 1,000,000,000,000,000.

‘P’

‘PiB’

pebibyte: 2^50 = 1,125,899,906,842,624.

‘EB’

exabyte: 10^18 = 1,000,000,000,000,000,000.

‘E’

‘EiB’

exbibyte: 2^60 = 1,152,921,504,606,846,976.

‘ZB’

zettabyte: 10^21 = 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

‘Z’

‘ZiB’

2^70 = 1,180,591,620,717,411,303,424. (‘Zi’ is a GNU extension to IEC 60027-2.)

‘YB’

yottabyte: 10^24 = 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.

‘Y’

‘YiB’

2^80 = 1,208,925,819,614,629,174,706,176. (‘Yi’ is a GNU extension to IEC 60027-2.)