Finding the differences between two binary files

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).

[alice@onyx ~]$ cmp /bin/ls /bin/cat
/bin/ls /bin/cat differ: byte 25, line 1
[alice@onyx ~]$