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

Answer 1

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

Answer 2

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 3

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 4

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
  

Answer 5

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 6

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

cmp -b file1 file2