How to compare binary files to check if they are the same?

Question

What is the easiest way (using a graphical tool or command line on Ubuntu Linux) to know if two binary files are the same or not (except for the time stamps)? I do not need to actually extract the difference. I just need to know whether they are the same or not.

Answer 1

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.

Answer 2

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.

Answer 3

I found Visual Binary Diff was what I was looking for, available on:

• Ubuntu: apt-get install vbindiff
• Arch Linux: pacman -S vbindiff
• Mac OS X: port install vbindiff via MacPorts.
• Mac OS X: brew install vbindiff via Homebrew

Answer 4

Use sha1 to generate checksum:

sha1 [FILENAME1]
sha1 [FILENAME2]

Answer 5

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

Answer 6

Use cmp command. Refer to Binary Files and Forcing Text Comparisons for more information.

cmp -b file1 file2

Answer 7

md5 <filename1>

md5 <filename2>

See if they're the same :-)

Answer 8

For finding flash memory defects, I had to write this script which shows all 1K blocks which contain differences (not only the first one as cmp -b does)

#!/bin/sh

f1=testinput.dat
f2=testoutput.dat

size=$(stat -c%s $f1)
i=0
while [ $i -lt $size ]; do
  if ! r="`cmp -n 1024 -i $i -b $f1 $f2`"; then
    printf "%8x: %s\n" $i "$r"
  fi
  i=$(expr $i + 1024)
done

Output:

   2d400: testinput.dat testoutput.dat differ: byte 3, line 1 is 200 M-^@ 240 M- 
   2dc00: testinput.dat testoutput.dat differ: byte 8, line 1 is 327 M-W 127 W
   4d000: testinput.dat testoutput.dat differ: byte 37, line 1 is 270 M-8 260 M-0
   4d400: testinput.dat testoutput.dat differ: byte 19, line 1 is  46 &  44 $

Disclaimer: I hacked the script in 5 min. It doesn't support command line arguments nor does it support spaces in file names

Answer 9

Diff with the following options would do a binary comparison to check just if the files are different at all and it'd output if the files are the same as well:

diff -qs {file1} {file2}

If you are comparing two files with the same name in different directories, you can use this form instead:

diff -qs {file1} --to-file={dir2}

OS X El Capitan

Answer 10

Try diff -s

Short answer: run diff with the -s switch.

Long answer: read on below.

---

Here's an example. Let's start by creating two files with random binary contents:

$ dd if=/dev/random bs=1k count=1 of=test1.bin
1+0 records in
1+0 records out
1024 bytes (1,0 kB, 1,0 KiB) copied, 0,0100332 s, 102 kB/s


$ dd if=/dev/random bs=1k count=1 of=test2.bin
1+0 records in
1+0 records out
1024 bytes (1,0 kB, 1,0 KiB) copied, 0,0102889 s, 99,5 kB/s

Now let's make a copy of the first file:

$ cp test1.bin copyoftest1.bin

Now test1.bin and test2.bin should be different:

$ diff test1.bin test2.bin
Binary files test1.bin and test2.bin differ

... and test1.bin and copyoftest1.bin should be identical:

$ diff test1.bin copyoftest1.bin

But wait! Why is there no output?!?

The answer is: this is by design. There is no output on identical files.

But there are different error codes:

$ diff test1.bin test2.bin
Binary files test1.bin and test2.bin differ

$ echo $?
1


$ diff test1.bin copyoftest1.bin

$ echo $?
0

Now fortunately you don't have to check error codes each and every time because you can just use the -s (or --report-identical-files) switch to make diff be more verbose:

$ diff -s test1.bin copyoftest1.bin
Files test1.bin and copyoftest1.bin are identical

Answer 11

Radiff2 is a tool designed to compare binary files, similar to how regular diff compares text files.

Try radiff2 which is a part of radare2 disassembler. For instance, with this command:

radiff2 -x file1.bin file2.bin

You get pretty formatted two columns output where differences are highlighted.

Answer 12

My favourite ones using xxd hex-dumper from the vim package :

1) using vimdiff (part of vim)

#!/bin/bash
FILE1="$1"
FILE2="$2"
vimdiff <( xxd "$FILE1" ) <( xxd "$FILE2" )

2) using diff

#!/bin/bash
FILE1=$1
FILE2=$2
diff -W 140 -y <( xxd $FILE1 ) <( xxd $FILE2 ) | colordiff | less -R -p '  \|  '

Answer 13

There is a relatively simple way to check if two binary files are the same.

If you use file input/output in a programming language; you can store each bit of both the binary files into their own arrays.

At this point the check is as simple as :

if(file1 != file2){
    //do this
}else{
    /do that
}

Answer 14

md5sum binary1 binary2

If the md5sum is same, binaries are same

E.g

md5sum new*
89c60189c3fa7ab5c96ae121ec43bd4a  new.txt
89c60189c3fa7ab5c96ae121ec43bd4a  new1.txt
root@TinyDistro:~# cat new*
aa55 aa55 0000 8010 7738
aa55 aa55 0000 8010 7738


root@TinyDistro:~# cat new*
aa55 aa55 000 8010 7738
aa55 aa55 0000 8010 7738
root@TinyDistro:~# md5sum new*
4a7f86919d4ac00c6206e11fca462c6f  new.txt
89c60189c3fa7ab5c96ae121ec43bd4a  new1.txt