xref: /freebsd/usr.bin/column/column.1 (revision a866e170777b42fd7921eadd6e7e664f3a031d60)
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32.\"     @(#)column.1	8.1 (Berkeley) 6/6/93
33.\" $FreeBSD$
34.\"
35.Dd July 29, 2004
36.Os
37.Dt COLUMN 1
38.Sh NAME
39.Nm column
40.Nd columnate lists
41.Sh SYNOPSIS
42.Nm
43.Op Fl tx
44.Op Fl c Ar columns
45.Op Fl s Ar sep
46.Op Ar
47.Sh DESCRIPTION
48The
49.Nm
50utility formats its input into multiple columns.
51Rows are filled before columns.
52Input is taken from
53.Ar file
54operands, or, by default, from the standard input.
55Empty lines are ignored.
56.Pp
57The options are as follows:
58.Bl -tag -width indent
59.It Fl c
60Output is formatted for a display
61.Ar columns
62wide.
63.It Fl s
64Specify a set of characters to be used to delimit columns for the
65.Fl t
66option.
67.It Fl t
68Determine the number of columns the input contains and create a table.
69Columns are delimited with whitespace, by default, or with the characters
70supplied using the
71.Fl s
72option.
73Useful for pretty-printing displays.
74.It Fl x
75Fill columns before filling rows.
76.El
77.Sh EXIT STATUS
78.Ex -std
79.Sh ENVIRONMENT
80The
81.Ev COLUMNS , LANG , LC_ALL
82and
83.Ev LC_CTYPE
84environment variables affect the execution of
85.Nm
86as described in
87.Xr environ 7 .
88.Sh EXAMPLES
89.Dl (printf \&"PERM LINKS OWNER GROUP SIZE MONTH DAY \&"\ \&;\ \&\e
90.Dl printf \&"HH:MM/YEAR NAME\en\&"\ \&;\ \&\e
91.Dl ls -l \&| sed 1d) \&| column -t
92.Sh SEE ALSO
93.Xr colrm 1 ,
94.Xr ls 1 ,
95.Xr paste 1 ,
96.Xr sort 1
97.Sh HISTORY
98The
99.Nm
100command appeared in
101.Bx 4.3 Reno .
102.Sh BUGS
103Input lines are limited to
104.Dv LINE_MAX
105(2048) bytes in length.
106