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I have two binary files with different sizes. I need to compare first N bytes of these files in Linux. I expect that the result is either "yes" (the same) or "no" (not the same), not byte-to-byte comparing. The N may vary from KBs to GBs.
Currently I'm using the following approach:
head -c N input1.dat | rdiff signature >1.sig
head -c N input2.dat | rdiff signature >2.sig
diff 1.sig 2.sig
But I'm wondering if there is another approach, more simple. Thanks.
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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).
You can also force diff to report only whether files differ (but not how). Use the --brief ( -q ) option for this. In operating systems that distinguish between text and binary files, diff normally reads and writes all data as text. Use the --binary option to force diff to read and write binary data instead.
The head command is also capable of printing the first “n” bytes of a file. In the ASCII character set, each character takes one byte.
Try cmp:
cmp -n <bytes> file1 file2
From the man page: exit status is 0 if inputs are the same, 1 if different, 2 if trouble.
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