COLUMN(1) BSD Reference Manual COLUMN(1)NAMEcolumn - columnate lists
SYNOPSIScolumn [-tx] [-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 de-
fault, from the standard input. Empty lines are ignored.
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.
Column exits 0 on success, >0 if an error occurred.
ENVIRONMENT
COLUMNS The environment variable COLUMNS is used to determine the size
of the screen if no other information is available.
EXAMPLES
(printf "PERM OWNER GROUP NAME\n" ; \
ls -l | awk '{print $1 " " $3 " " $4 " " $9}' | sed 1d) | column-t
SEE ALSOcolrm(1), ls(1), paste(1), sort(1)HISTORY
The column command appeared in 4.3BSD-Reno.
BSDI BSD/OS June 6, 1993 1