join’s field matchingIn this section the sort commands are omitted for brevity.
Sorting the files before joining is still required.
join’s default behavior is to print only lines common to
both input files. Use -a and -v to print unpairable lines
from one or both files.
All examples below use the following two (pre-sorted) input files:
$ cat file1 a 1 b 2 | $ cat file2 a A c C |
| Command | Outcome |
|---|---|
$ join file1 file2 a 1 A | common lines (intersection) |
$ join -a 1 file1 file2 a 1 A b 2 | common lines and unpaired lines from the first file |
$ join -a 2 file1 file2 a 1 A c C | common lines and unpaired lines from the second file |
$ join -a 1 -a 2 file1 file2 a 1 A b 2 c C | all lines (paired and unpaired) from both files
(union).
see note below regarding -o auto. |
$ join -v 1 file1 file2 b 2 | unpaired lines from the first file (difference) |
$ join -v 2 file1 file2 c C | unpaired lines from the second file (difference) |
$ join -v 1 -v 2 file1 file2 b 2 c C | unpaired lines from both files, omitting common lines (symmetric difference). |
The -o auto -e X options are useful when dealing with unpaired lines. The following example prints all lines (common and unpaired) from both files. Without -o auto it is not easy to discern which fields originate from which file:
$ join -a 1 -a 2 file1 file2 a 1 A b 2 c C $ join -o auto -e X -a 1 -a 2 file1 file2 a 1 A b 2 X c X C
If the input has no unpairable lines, a GNU extension is available; the sort order can be any order that considers two fields to be equal if and only if the sort comparison described above considers them to be equal. For example:
$ cat file1 a a1 c c1 b b1 $ cat file2 a a2 c c2 b b2 $ join file1 file2 a a1 a2 c c1 c2 b b1 b2