.\" Copyright (c) 1989, 1990, 1993
.\"	The Regents of the University of California.  All rights reserved.
.\"
.\" Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
.\" modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions
.\" are met:
.\" 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
.\"    notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
.\" 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright
.\"    notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the
.\"    documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
.\" 3. Neither the name of the University nor the names of its contributors
.\"    may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software
.\"    without specific prior written permission.
.\"
.\" THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE REGENTS AND CONTRIBUTORS ``AS IS'' AND
.\" ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE
.\" IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE
.\" ARE DISCLAIMED.  IN NO EVENT SHALL THE REGENTS OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE
.\" FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL
.\" DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS
.\" OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION)
.\" HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT
.\" LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY
.\" OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF
.\" SUCH DAMAGE.
.\"
.\"     @(#)column.1	8.1 (Berkeley) 6/6/93
.\" $FreeBSD: head/usr.bin/column/column.1 314436 2017-02-28 23:42:47Z imp $
.\"
.Dd July 29, 2004
.Dt COLUMN 1
.Os
.Sh NAME
.Nm column
.Nd columnate lists
.Sh SYNOPSIS
.Nm
.Op Fl entx
.Op Fl c Ar columns
.Op Fl s Ar sep
.Op Ar
.Sh DESCRIPTION
The
.Nm
utility formats its input into multiple columns.
Rows are filled before columns.
Input is taken from
.Ar file
operands, or, by default, from the standard input.
Empty lines are ignored unless the
.Fl e
option is used.
.Pp
The options are as follows:
.Bl -tag -width indent
.It Fl c
Output is formatted for a display
.Ar columns
wide.
.It Fl s
Specify a set of characters to be used to delimit columns for the
.Fl t
option.
.It Fl t
Determine the number of columns the input contains and create a table.
Columns are delimited with whitespace, by default, or with the characters
supplied using the
.Fl s
option.
Useful for pretty-printing displays.
.It Fl x
Fill columns before filling rows.
.It Fl n
By default, the column command will merge multiple adjacent delimiters into a
single delimiter when using the
.Fl t
option; this option disables that behavior. This option is a Debian GNU/Linux extension.
.It Fl e
Do not ignore empty lines.
.El
.Sh ENVIRONMENT
The
.Ev COLUMNS , LANG , LC_ALL
and
.Ev LC_CTYPE
environment variables affect the execution of
.Nm
as described in
.Xr environ 7 .
.Sh EXIT STATUS
.Ex -std
.Sh EXAMPLES
.Dl (printf \&"PERM LINKS OWNER GROUP SIZE MONTH DAY \&"\ \&;\ \&\e
.Dl printf \&"HH:MM/YEAR NAME\en\&"\ \&;\ \&\e
.Dl ls -l \&| sed 1d) \&| column -t
.Sh SEE ALSO
.Xr colrm 1 ,
.Xr ls 1 ,
.Xr paste 1 ,
.Xr sort 1
.Sh HISTORY
The
.Nm
command appeared in
.Bx 4.3 Reno .
.Sh BUGS
Input lines are limited to 512 times
.Dv LINE_MAX
(1M) wide characters in length.