column

columnate lists

Synopsis

column [-entx] [-c columns] [-s sep] [file ...]

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examples

(printf "PERM LINKS OWNER GROUP SIZE MONTH DAY " ; \
printf "HH:MM/YEAR NAME\n" ; \
ls -l | sed 1d) | column -t

source

            
  make


  ./column |tee screen

source

            
  alias mount='mount
  |column -t'

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.

bugs

Input lines are limited to LINE_MAX (2048) bytes in length.

BSD July 29, 2004 BSD

history

The column command appeared in 4.3BSD-Reno.

see also

colrm , ls , paste , sort