xref: /freebsd/usr.bin/column/column.1 (revision 2008043f386721d58158e37e0d7e50df8095942d)
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28.\"     @(#)column.1	8.1 (Berkeley) 6/6/93
29.\"
30.Dd July 29, 2004
31.Dt COLUMN 1
32.Os
33.Sh NAME
34.Nm column
35.Nd columnate lists
36.Sh SYNOPSIS
37.Nm
38.Op Fl tx
39.Op Fl c Ar columns
40.Op Fl s Ar sep
41.Op Ar
42.Sh DESCRIPTION
43The
44.Nm
45utility formats its input into multiple columns.
46Rows are filled before columns.
47Input is taken from
48.Ar file
49operands, or, by default, from the standard input.
50Empty lines are ignored.
51.Pp
52The options are as follows:
53.Bl -tag -width indent
54.It Fl c
55Output is formatted for a display
56.Ar columns
57wide.
58.It Fl s
59Specify a set of characters to be used to delimit columns for the
60.Fl t
61option.
62.It Fl t
63Determine the number of columns the input contains and create a table.
64Columns are delimited with whitespace, by default, or with the characters
65supplied using the
66.Fl s
67option.
68Useful for pretty-printing displays.
69.It Fl x
70Fill columns before filling rows.
71.El
72.Sh ENVIRONMENT
73The
74.Ev COLUMNS , LANG , LC_ALL
75and
76.Ev LC_CTYPE
77environment variables affect the execution of
78.Nm
79as described in
80.Xr environ 7 .
81.Sh EXIT STATUS
82.Ex -std
83.Sh EXAMPLES
84.Dl (printf \&"PERM LINKS OWNER GROUP SIZE MONTH DAY \&"\ \&;\ \&\e
85.Dl printf \&"HH:MM/YEAR NAME\en\&"\ \&;\ \&\e
86.Dl ls -l \&| sed 1d) \&| column -t
87.Sh SEE ALSO
88.Xr colrm 1 ,
89.Xr ls 1 ,
90.Xr paste 1 ,
91.Xr sort 1
92.Sh HISTORY
93The
94.Nm
95command appeared in
96.Bx 4.3 Reno .
97.Sh BUGS
98Input lines are limited to
99.Dv LINE_MAX
100(2048) bytes in length.
101