0

I'm confused on the use of the uniq command. Can anyone explain this command and how to use it?

How can I use uniq without specifying any option? Any example would be helped and appreciated.

Improve this question
1
  • 8
    Have you tried reading the man page for uniq? man uniq. Commented Mar 8, 2013 at 3:05

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
1

uniq read file line-by-line, and only consider a duplicate when the current line is exactly the same as the last line,

i.e for a input file like this,

1
1
2
1

You'll get an output like this,

1
2
1

To use it, you can either run it though a pipe, i.e

command | uniq

Or get the input from a file like this,

uniq < input > output

Improve this answer
5
  • I have to downvote this because it doesn't appear to answer the question at all. The question is about uniq, not sort. Data does need to be sorted for uniq to work, but that is not included here. Commented Mar 8, 2013 at 6:19
  • @jordanm ah, I take it wrong, answer updated, thanks for pointing out Commented Mar 8, 2013 at 6:26
  • However, all my uses of uniq combine with sort Commented Mar 8, 2013 at 12:30
  • Downvote removed Commented Mar 8, 2013 at 15:37
  • For completeness, I'd suggest including a demonstration of how uniq and sort work together; I agree that uniq is most useful when combined with sort. Commented Mar 8, 2013 at 17:06

You must log in to answer this question.

Start asking to get answers

Find the answer to your question by asking.

Ask question

Explore related questions

See similar questions with these tags.