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NAME

column — columnate lists

SYNOPSIS

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.

The options are as follows:

-c columns

Output is formatted for a display columns wide.

-s sep

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.

ENVIRONMENT

COLUMNS

The environment variable COLUMNS is used to determine the size of the screen if no other information is available.

EXIT STATUS

The column utility exits 0 on success, and >0 if an error occurs.

EXAMPLES

List the current working directory's contents, in detail, with nicely formatted headings for each of the fields:

$ (echo "PERM LINKS OWNER GROUP SIZE MONTH DAY HH:MM/YEAR NAME" ; \
	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.