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  • @Bananguin Thanks for the edit, that probably is true. I'm not entirely sure what OP is trying accomplish... Commented Nov 11, 2013 at 18:26
  • actually i just felt bad because your version was not wrong, just one corner too much for me to handle before dinner. still, it's more spelled out now :D Commented Nov 11, 2013 at 18:29
  • The Unix convention for return codes is a bit broader than “0 for success, >0 for failure”. For commands that return a boolean result, the convention is “0 for yes, 1 for no, >1 for failure”. diff is an example of this, as are grep, test, … Commented Nov 12, 2013 at 0:09
  • @Gilles Well, diff would ask "are these files different?"... Arguably, diff is backwards. But I guess both it and cmp both return 0 for match, 1 for differ. Commented Nov 12, 2013 at 0:31
  • @derobert diff and cmp ask “are these files identical?” Commented Nov 12, 2013 at 0:38