HPR4657: UNIX Curio #8 - Comparing Files

HPR4657: UNIX Curio #8 - Comparing Files

From Hacker Public Radio by Hacker Public Radio

June 9, 2026

About this episode

This episode explores lesser-known tools for comparing files in UNIX-like operating systems.

This show has been flagged as Clean by the host. This series is dedicated to exploring little-known—and occasionally useful—trinkets lurking in the dusty corners of UNIX-like operating systems. Most users of UNIX-like systems are probably familiar with the diff utility. It is widely used with source code to compare two files and see what the differences are between them. Non-programmers, like me, also use it to examine what has changed in different versions of scripts or configuration files. Quite a few pieces of newer software can compare different versions of data and express changes in a format either identical to or similar to diff output. However, there are two other long-standing tools for this purpose that are far less known and deserve in my view to be termed UNIX Curios. The first of these is cmp 1 . While diff is primarily intended to be used on text files and compares them line by line, cmp compares files byte by byte. In my experience, its main use is to see whether two binary files are in fact identical—if they are, cmp outputs nothing and returns an exit status of 0. Back when methods of transferring files were not as reliable as they are today, this was a tool I…

People in this episode

Host: Hacker Public Radio

Topics covered

  • UNIX
  • file comparison
  • diff utility
  • cmp utility
  • binary files
  • configuration files

Keywords

  • UNIX
  • file comparison
  • diff
  • cmp
  • binary files
  • configuration files

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: UNIX

Products: diff, cmp, CD-ROM

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