text-utils/column.1

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  32 .\"     @(#)column.1    8.1 (Berkeley) 6/6/93
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  34 .Dd June 6, 1993
  35 .Os
  36 .Dt COLUMN 1
  37 .Sh NAME
  38 .Nm column
  39 .Nd columnate lists
  40 .Sh SYNOPSIS
  41 .Nm column
  42 .Op Fl tx
  43 .Op Fl c Ar columns
  44 .Op Fl s Ar sep
  45 .Op Ar
  46 .Sh DESCRIPTION
  47 The
  48 .Nm column
  49 utility formats its input into multiple columns.
  50 Rows are filled before columns.
  51 Input is taken from
  52 .Ar file
  53 operands, or, by default, from the standard input.
  54 Empty lines are ignored.
  55 .Pp
  56 The options are as follows:
  57 .Bl -tag -width Ds
  58 .It Fl c
  59 Output is formatted for a display
  60 .Ar columns
  61 wide.
  62 .It Fl s
  63 Specify a set of characters to be used to delimit columns for the
  64 .Fl t
  65 option.
  66 .It Fl t
  67 Determine the number of columns the input contains and create a table.
  68 Columns are delimited with whitespace, by default, or with the characters
  69 supplied using the
  70 .Fl s
  71 option.
  72 Useful for pretty-printing displays.
  73 .It Fl x
  74 Fill columns before filling rows.
  75 .El
  76 .Pp
  77 .Nm Column
  78 exits 0 on success, >0 if an error occurred.
  79 .Sh ENVIRONMENT
  80 .Bl -tag -width COLUMNS
  81 .It Ev COLUMNS
  82 The environment variable
  83 .Ev COLUMNS
  84 is used to determine the size of
  85 the screen if no other information is available.
  86 .El
  87 .Sh EXAMPLES
  88 .Dl (printf \&"PERM LINKS OWNER GROUP SIZE MONTH DAY HH:MM/YEAR\ NAME\en\&"\ \&\e
  89 .Dl \&; ls -l \&| sed 1d) \&| column -t
  90 .Sh SEE ALSO
  91 .Xr colrm 1 ,
  92 .Xr ls 1 ,
  93 .Xr paste 1 ,
  94 .Xr sort 1
  95 .Sh HISTORY
  96 The
  97 .Nm
  98 command appeared in
  99 .Bx 4.3 Reno .
 100 .Sh AVAILABILITY
 101 The column command is part of the util-linux-ng package and is available from
 102 ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux-ng/.