Question

Is there a simple unix command set I can use to separate two lists into three lists that are comprised of the common lines between the two lists, the lines unique to the first, and the lines unique to the last? The lists would be unsorted and each line would be unique.

For example:
List 1:
cat
hat
box

List 2:
box
dog
rock

Output: box, cat hat, dog rock

Answer 1

cat file1
box
cat
hat

cat file2
box
dog 
rock

comm file1 file
              box
cat
   dog
hat
   rock

The output is column based, with column being data only in 1st file, 2nd column being data only in 2nd file, and 3rd column is values common to both.

Note that data is sorted.

If you’re using bash, you can do things like

 comm <(sort file1) <(sort file2)

to temporarly sort the files.

by using args to comm like -1 -2 you can supress the output of column 1 and 2, and of course -3 by itself would elimate the 3rd column (words in common), leaving just the words not common.

I hope this helps.