HowTo: Compare binary files on Linux

[peter_b]

If you use "diff" to compare binary files (that have the same size), it will just tell you that:

Binary files A and B differ

If you want to know the which bytes at which offsets differ, use the "cmp" command:

Code: Select all

$ cmp -l a.bin b.bin

Without the "-l" parameter, cmp will just tell you the first offset that differs.

With "-l" it will give you an output that looks somewhat like this:

Code: Select all

     173  50 362
    9067  63  67
    9068  70  60
    9069  65  62

According to cmp's manpage, it's "byte numbers and differing byte values".
The first column is the byte offset in decimal (CAUTION: starts at 1 not 0), but I haven't figured out yet what the values of column 2 or 3 mean. In my case here it's neither the value in each file, nor the difference, nor anything.

However: cmp is nice to see how many bytes at which offsets differ!