xref: /freebsd/usr.bin/column/column.1 (revision 4b9d605768acabc460aa6dcfe8a1f8db35b16794)
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28.Dd July 29, 2004
29.Dt COLUMN 1
30.Os
31.Sh NAME
32.Nm column
33.Nd columnate lists
34.Sh SYNOPSIS
35.Nm
36.Op Fl tx
37.Op Fl c Ar columns
38.Op Fl s Ar sep
39.Op Ar
40.Sh DESCRIPTION
41The
42.Nm
43utility formats its input into multiple columns.
44Rows are filled before columns.
45Input is taken from
46.Ar file
47operands, or, by default, from the standard input.
48Empty lines are ignored.
49.Pp
50The options are as follows:
51.Bl -tag -width indent
52.It Fl c
53Output is formatted for a display
54.Ar columns
55wide.
56.It Fl s
57Specify a set of characters to be used to delimit columns for the
58.Fl t
59option.
60.It Fl t
61Determine the number of columns the input contains and create a table.
62Columns are delimited with whitespace, by default, or with the characters
63supplied using the
64.Fl s
65option.
66Useful for pretty-printing displays.
67.It Fl x
68Fill columns before filling rows.
69.El
70.Sh ENVIRONMENT
71The
72.Ev COLUMNS , LANG , LC_ALL
73and
74.Ev LC_CTYPE
75environment variables affect the execution of
76.Nm
77as described in
78.Xr environ 7 .
79.Sh EXIT STATUS
80.Ex -std
81.Sh EXAMPLES
82.Dl (printf \&"PERM LINKS OWNER GROUP SIZE MONTH DAY \&"\ \&;\ \&\e
83.Dl printf \&"HH:MM/YEAR NAME\en\&"\ \&;\ \&\e
84.Dl ls -l \&| sed 1d) \&| column -t
85.Sh SEE ALSO
86.Xr colrm 1 ,
87.Xr ls 1 ,
88.Xr paste 1 ,
89.Xr sort 1
90.Sh HISTORY
91The
92.Nm
93command appeared in
94.Bx 4.3 Reno .
95.Sh BUGS
96Input lines are limited to
97.Dv LINE_MAX
98(2048) bytes in length.
99