PROLOG | NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | OPTIONS | OPERANDS | STDIN | INPUT FILES | ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES | ASYNCHRONOUS EVENTS | STDOUT | STDERR | OUTPUT FILES | EXTENDED DESCRIPTION | EXIT STATUS | CONSEQUENCES OF ERRORS | APPLICATION USAGE | EXAMPLES | RATIONALE | FUTURE DIRECTIONS | SEE ALSO | COPYRIGHT

UNIQ(1P)                  POSIX Programmer's Manual                 UNIQ(1P)

PROLOG         top

       This manual page is part of the POSIX Programmer's Manual.  The Linux
       implementation of this interface may differ (consult the
       corresponding Linux manual page for details of Linux behavior), or
       the interface may not be implemented on Linux.

NAME         top

       uniq — report or filter out repeated lines in a file

SYNOPSIS         top

       uniq [−c|−d|−u] [−f fields] [−s char] [input_file [output_file]]

DESCRIPTION         top

       The uniq utility shall read an input file comparing adjacent lines,
       and write one copy of each input line on the output. The second and
       succeeding copies of repeated adjacent input lines shall not be
       written.  The trailing <newline> of each line in the input shall be
       ignored when doing comparisons.
       Repeated lines in the input shall not be detected if they are not
       adjacent.

OPTIONS         top

       The uniq utility shall conform to the Base Definitions volume of
       POSIX.1‐2008, Section 12.2, Utility Syntax Guidelines, except that
       '+' may be recognized as an option delimiter as well as '−'.
       The following options shall be supported:
       −c        Precede each output line with a count of the number of
                 times the line occurred in the input.
       −d        Suppress the writing of lines that are not repeated in the
                 input.
       −f fields Ignore the first fields fields on each input line when
                 doing comparisons, where fields is a positive decimal
                 integer. A field is the maximal string matched by the basic
                 regular expression:
                     [[:blank:]]*[^[:blank:]]*
                 If the fields option-argument specifies more fields than
                 appear on an input line, a null string shall be used for
                 comparison.
       −s chars  Ignore the first chars characters when doing comparisons,
                 where chars shall be a positive decimal integer. If
                 specified in conjunction with the −f option, the first
                 chars characters after the first fields fields shall be
                 ignored. If the chars option-argument specifies more
                 characters than remain on an input line, a null string
                 shall be used for comparison.
       −u        Suppress the writing of lines that are repeated in the
                 input.

OPERANDS         top

       The following operands shall be supported:
       input_file
                 A pathname of the input file. If the input_file operand is
                 not specified, or if the input_file is '−', the standard
                 input shall be used.
       output_file
                 A pathname of the output file. If the output_file operand
                 is not specified, the standard output shall be used. The
                 results are unspecified if the file named by output_file is
                 the file named by input_file.

STDIN         top

       The standard input shall be used only if no input_file operand is
       specified or if input_file is '−'.  See the INPUT FILES section.

INPUT FILES         top

       The input file shall be a text file.

ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES         top

       The following environment variables shall affect the execution of
       uniq:
       LANG      Provide a default value for the internationalization
                 variables that are unset or null. (See the Base Definitions
                 volume of POSIX.1‐2008, Section 8.2, Internationalization
                 Variables for the precedence of internationalization
                 variables used to determine the values of locale
                 categories.)
       LC_ALL    If set to a non-empty string value, override the values of
                 all the other internationalization variables.
       LC_COLLATE
                 Determine the locale for ordering rules.
       LC_CTYPE  Determine the locale for the interpretation of sequences of
                 bytes of text data as characters (for example, single-byte
                 as opposed to multi-byte characters in arguments and input
                 files) and which characters constitute a <blank> in the
                 current locale.
       LC_MESSAGES
                 Determine the locale that should be used to affect the
                 format and contents of diagnostic messages written to
                 standard error.
       NLSPATH   Determine the location of message catalogs for the
                 processing of LC_MESSAGES.

ASYNCHRONOUS EVENTS         top

       Default.

STDOUT         top

       The standard output shall be used if no output_file operand is
       specified, and shall be used if the output_file operand is '−' and
       the implementation treats the '−' as meaning standard output.
       Otherwise, the standard output shall not be used.  See the OUTPUT
       FILES section.

STDERR         top

       The standard error shall be used only for diagnostic messages.

OUTPUT FILES         top

       If the −c option is specified, the output file shall be empty or each
       line shall be of the form:
           "%d %s", <number of duplicates>, <line>
       otherwise, the output file shall be empty or each line shall be of
       the form:
           "%s", <line>

EXTENDED DESCRIPTION         top

       None.

EXIT STATUS         top

       The following exit values shall be returned:
        0    The utility executed successfully.
       >0    An error occurred.

CONSEQUENCES OF ERRORS         top

       Default.
       The following sections are informative.

APPLICATION USAGE         top

       The sort utility can be used to cause repeated lines to be adjacent
       in the input file.

EXAMPLES         top

       The following input file data (but flushed left) was used for a test
       series on uniq:
           #01 foo0 bar0 foo1 bar1
           #02 bar0 foo1 bar1 foo1
           #03 foo0 bar0 foo1 bar1
           #04
           #05 foo0 bar0 foo1 bar1
           #06 foo0 bar0 foo1 bar1
           #07 bar0 foo1 bar1 foo0
       What follows is a series of test invocations of the uniq utility that
       use a mixture of uniq options against the input file data. These
       tests verify the meaning of adjacent.  The uniq utility views the
       input data as a sequence of strings delimited by '\n'.  Accordingly,
       for the fieldsth member of the sequence, uniq interprets unique or
       repeated adjacent lines strictly relative to the fields+1th member.
        1. This first example tests the line counting option, comparing each
           line of the input file data starting from the second field:
               uniq −c −f 1 uniq_0I.t
                   1 #01 foo0 bar0 foo1 bar1
                   1 #02 bar0 foo1 bar1 foo1
                   1 #03 foo0 bar0 foo1 bar1
                   1 #04
                   2 #05 foo0 bar0 foo1 bar1
                   1 #07 bar0 foo1 bar1 foo0
           The number '2', prefixing the fifth line of output, signifies
           that the uniq utility detected a pair of repeated lines. Given
           the input data, this can only be true when uniq is run using the
           −f 1 option (which shall cause uniq to ignore the first field on
           each input line).
        2. The second example tests the option to suppress unique lines,
           comparing each line of the input file data starting from the
           second field:
               uniq −d −f 1 uniq_0I.t
               #05 foo0 bar0 foo1 bar1
        3. This test suppresses repeated lines, comparing each line of the
           input file data starting from the second field:
               uniq −u −f 1 uniq_0I.t
               #01 foo0 bar0 foo1 bar1
               #02 bar0 foo1 bar1 foo1
               #03 foo0 bar0 foo1 bar1
               #04
               #07 bar0 foo1 bar1 foo0
        4. This suppresses unique lines, comparing each line of the input
           file data starting from the third character:
               uniq −d −s 2 uniq_0I.t
           In the last example, the uniq utility found no input matching the
           above criteria.

RATIONALE         top

       Some historical implementations have limited lines to be 1080 bytes
       in length, which does not meet the implied {LINE_MAX} limit.
       Earlier versions of this standard allowed the number and +number
       options. These options are no longer specified by POSIX.1‐2008 but
       may be present in some implementations.

FUTURE DIRECTIONS         top

       None.

SEE ALSO         top

       comm(1p), sort(1p)
       The Base Definitions volume of POSIX.1‐2008, Chapter 8, Environment
       Variables, Section 12.2, Utility Syntax Guidelines

COPYRIGHT         top

       Portions of this text are reprinted and reproduced in electronic form
       from IEEE Std 1003.1, 2013 Edition, Standard for Information
       Technology -- Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX), The Open
       Group Base Specifications Issue 7, Copyright (C) 2013 by the
       Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc and The Open
       Group.  (This is POSIX.1-2008 with the 2013 Technical Corrigendum 1
       applied.) In the event of any discrepancy between this version and
       the original IEEE and The Open Group Standard, the original IEEE and
       The Open Group Standard is the referee document. The original
       Standard can be obtained online at http://www.unix.org/online.html .
       Any typographical or formatting errors that appear in this page are
       most likely to have been introduced during the conversion of the
       source files to man page format. To report such errors, see
       https://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/reporting_bugs.html .
IEEE/The Open Group                 2013                            UNIQ(1P)

Pages that refer to this page: comm(1p)join(1p)sort(1p)