hi, file1: hello hi test god file2: hi hello let's say file one is a masterfile, and i wanted to print out string that are in file1 and NOT in file2.. how do i do that? i'm not able to use the diff command as DIFF COMMAND compares line one in file1 with line one in file2. kindly assist

Take a look at the Unix comm command, select or reject lines common to two files.

comm -23 file1s file2s That comm solution (like diff) does require sorting both files first. And also like diff, this is a line-per-line matchup.  If file2 has a single line "hello", and file1 has two or more of those lines, the comm command will match up and ignore one pair, but the additional hello lines in file1, being unmatched, would print. And that may be what you want. Following is a solution that does not require sorting the files, and if a line exists in file2, that will cause all occurrences of that line in file1 to be ignored. awk 'BEGIN { while ((getline < "file2") > 0) list[$1] = 1} !list[$1]' file1