xref: /openbsd/usr.bin/uniq/uniq.1 (revision 5dea098c)
1.\"	$OpenBSD: uniq.1,v 1.22 2021/11/02 15:12:09 millert Exp $
2.\"	$NetBSD: uniq.1,v 1.5 1994/12/06 07:51:15 jtc Exp $
3.\"
4.\" Copyright (c) 1991, 1993
5.\"	The Regents of the University of California.  All rights reserved.
6.\"
7.\" This code is derived from software contributed to Berkeley by
8.\" the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc.
9.\"
10.\" Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
11.\" modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions
12.\" are met:
13.\" 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
14.\"    notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
15.\" 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright
16.\"    notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the
17.\"    documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
18.\" 3. Neither the name of the University nor the names of its contributors
19.\"    may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software
20.\"    without specific prior written permission.
21.\"
22.\" THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE REGENTS AND CONTRIBUTORS ``AS IS'' AND
23.\" ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE
24.\" IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE
25.\" ARE DISCLAIMED.  IN NO EVENT SHALL THE REGENTS OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE
26.\" FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL
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33.\"
34.\"     @(#)uniq.1	8.1 (Berkeley) 6/6/93
35.\"
36.Dd $Mdocdate: November 2 2021 $
37.Dt UNIQ 1
38.Os
39.Sh NAME
40.Nm uniq
41.Nd report or filter out repeated lines in a file
42.Sh SYNOPSIS
43.Nm uniq
44.Op Fl ci
45.Op Fl d | u
46.Op Fl f Ar fields
47.Op Fl s Ar chars
48.Oo
49.Ar input_file
50.Op Ar output_file
51.Oc
52.Sh DESCRIPTION
53The
54.Nm
55utility reads the standard input comparing adjacent lines and writes
56a copy of each unique input line to the standard output.
57The second and succeeding copies of identical adjacent input lines are
58not written.
59Repeated lines in the input will not be detected if they are not adjacent,
60so it may be necessary to sort the files first.
61.Pp
62The options are as follows:
63.Bl -tag -width Ds
64.It Fl c
65Precede each output line with the count of the number of times the line
66occurred in the input, followed by a single space.
67.It Fl d
68Only output lines which have duplicates.
69.It Fl f Ar fields
70Ignore the first
71.Ar fields
72in each input line when doing comparisons.
73A field is a string of non-blank characters separated from adjacent fields
74by blanks, with blanks considered part of the following field.
75Field numbers are one based, i.e., the first field is field one.
76.It Fl i
77Regard lower and upper case ASCII characters as identical.
78.It Fl s Ar chars
79Ignore the first
80.Ar chars
81characters in each input line when doing comparisons.
82If specified in conjunction with the
83.Fl f
84option, the first
85.Ar chars
86characters after the first
87.Ar fields
88fields will be ignored.
89Character numbers are one based, i.e., the first character is character one.
90.It Fl u
91Only output lines which are unique.
92.\".It Fl Ns Ar n
93.\"(Deprecated; replaced by
94.\".Fl f ) .
95.\"Ignore the first n
96.\"fields on each input line when doing comparisons,
97.\"where n is a number.
98.\"A field is a string of non-blank
99.\"characters separated from adjacent fields
100.\"by blanks.
101.\".It Cm \&\(pl Ns Ar n
102.\"(Deprecated; replaced by
103.\".Fl s ) .
104.\"Ignore the first
105.\".Ar m
106.\"characters when doing comparisons, where
107.\".Ar m
108.\"is a
109.\"number.
110.El
111.Pp
112If additional arguments are specified on the command line, the first
113such argument is used as the name of an input file, the second is used
114as the name of an output file.
115A file name of
116.Ql -
117denotes the standard input or the standard output
118.Pq depending on its position on the command line .
119.Sh ENVIRONMENT
120.Bl -tag -width LC_CTYPE
121.It Ev LC_CTYPE
122The character encoding
123.Xr locale 1 .
124It decides which byte sequences form characters
125and which characters are considered blank.
126If unset or set to
127.Qq C ,
128.Qq POSIX ,
129or an unsupported value, each byte is treated as a character,
130and only space and tab are considered blank.
131.Pp
132This variable is ignored for case comparisons.
133Lower and upper case versions of non-ASCII characters are always
134considered different.
135.El
136.Sh EXIT STATUS
137.Ex -std uniq
138.Sh SEE ALSO
139.Xr sort 1
140.Sh STANDARDS
141The
142.Nm
143utility is compliant with the
144.St -p1003.1-2008
145specification.
146.Pp
147The
148.Fl i
149option and the use of
150.Fl c
151in conjunction with
152.Fl d
153or
154.Fl u
155are extensions to that specification.
156.Pp
157The historic
158.Cm + Ns Ar number
159and
160.Fl Ns Ar number
161options have been deprecated but are still supported in this implementation.
162.Sh HISTORY
163A
164.Nm
165utility first appeared in
166.At v3 .
167