NAME¶
column
—
columnate lists
SYNOPSIS¶
column |
[ -entx ]
[-c
columns ]
[-s
sep ]
[file ... ] |
DESCRIPTION¶
The
column
utility formats its input into
multiple columns. Rows are filled before columns. Input is taken from
file operands, or, by default, from the
standard input. Empty lines are ignored unless the
-e
option is used.
The options are as follows:
-c
- Output is formatted for a display columns
wide.
-s
- Specify a set of characters to be used to delimit columns for the
-t
option.
-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
-s
option. Useful
for pretty-printing displays.
-x
- Fill columns before filling rows.
-n
- By default, the column command will merge multiple adjacent delimiters
into a single delimiter when using the
-t
option; this option disables that
behavior. This option is a Debian GNU/Linux extension.
-e
- Do not ignore empty lines.
ENVIRONMENT¶
The
COLUMNS
,
LANG
,
LC_ALL
and
LC_CTYPE
environment variables affect the
execution of
column
as described in
environ(7).
EXIT STATUS¶
The
column
utility exits 0 on success,
and >0 if an error occurs.
EXAMPLES¶
(printf "PERM LINKS OWNER GROUP
SIZE MONTH DAY " ; \
printf "HH:MM/YEAR
NAME\n" ; \
ls -l | sed 1d) | column
-t
SEE ALSO¶
colrm(1),
ls(1),
paste(1),
sort(1)
HISTORY¶
The
column
command appeared in
4.3BSD-Reno.
BUGS¶
Input lines are limited to
LINE_MAX
(2048)
bytes in length.