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Use the command cmp to check if two files are the same byte by byte. The command cmp does not list differences like the diff command. However it is handy for a fast check of whether two files are the same or not (especially useful for binary data files).
diff determines whether a file is text or binary by checking the first few bytes in the file; the exact number of bytes is system dependent, but it is typically several thousand. If every byte in that part of the file is non-null, diff considers the file to be text; otherwise it considers the file to be binary.
Comparing files with the diff command Probably the easiest way to compare two files is to use the diff command. The output will show you the differences between the two files. The < and > signs indicate whether the extra lines are in the first (<) or second (>) file provided as arguments.
We can see if two files have the same content by calculating their hash values. As we can see, file1 and file3 have the same content as their hashes match, whereas file2 is different.
The standard unix diff will show if the files are the same or not:
[me@host ~]$ diff 1.bin 2.bin
Binary files 1.bin and 2.bin differ
If there is no output from the command, it means that the files have no differences.
Use cmp command. This will either exit cleanly if they are binary equal, or it will print out where the first difference occurs and exit.
I found Visual Binary Diff was what I was looking for, available on:
Ubuntu:
sudo apt install vbindiff
Arch Linux:
sudo pacman -S vbindiff
Mac OS X via MacPorts:
port install vbindiff
Mac OS X via Homebrew:
brew install vbindiff
Use sha1 to generate checksum:
sha1 [FILENAME1]
sha1 [FILENAME2]
I ended up using hexdump to convert the binary files to there hex representation and then opened them in meld / kompare / any other diff tool. Unlike you I was after the differences in the files.
hexdump tmp/Circle_24.png > tmp/hex1.txt
hexdump /tmp/Circle_24.png > tmp/hex2.txt
meld tmp/hex1.txt tmp/hex2.txt
You can use MD5 hash function to check if two files are the same, with this you can not see the differences in a low level, but is a quick way to compare two files.
md5 <filename1>
md5 <filename2>
If both MD5 hashes (the command output) are the same, then, the two files are not different.
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