xref: /freebsd/usr.bin/column/column.1 (revision f5147e312f43a9050468de539aeafa072caa1a60)
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28.\"     @(#)column.1	8.1 (Berkeley) 6/6/93
29.\" $FreeBSD$
30.\"
31.Dd July 29, 2004
32.Dt COLUMN 1
33.Os
34.Sh NAME
35.Nm column
36.Nd columnate lists
37.Sh SYNOPSIS
38.Nm
39.Op Fl tx
40.Op Fl c Ar columns
41.Op Fl s Ar sep
42.Op Ar
43.Sh DESCRIPTION
44The
45.Nm
46utility formats its input into multiple columns.
47Rows are filled before columns.
48Input is taken from
49.Ar file
50operands, or, by default, from the standard input.
51Empty lines are ignored.
52.Pp
53The options are as follows:
54.Bl -tag -width indent
55.It Fl c
56Output is formatted for a display
57.Ar columns
58wide.
59.It Fl s
60Specify a set of characters to be used to delimit columns for the
61.Fl t
62option.
63.It Fl t
64Determine the number of columns the input contains and create a table.
65Columns are delimited with whitespace, by default, or with the characters
66supplied using the
67.Fl s
68option.
69Useful for pretty-printing displays.
70.It Fl x
71Fill columns before filling rows.
72.El
73.Sh ENVIRONMENT
74The
75.Ev COLUMNS , LANG , LC_ALL
76and
77.Ev LC_CTYPE
78environment variables affect the execution of
79.Nm
80as described in
81.Xr environ 7 .
82.Sh EXIT STATUS
83.Ex -std
84.Sh EXAMPLES
85.Dl (printf \&"PERM LINKS OWNER GROUP SIZE MONTH DAY \&"\ \&;\ \&\e
86.Dl printf \&"HH:MM/YEAR NAME\en\&"\ \&;\ \&\e
87.Dl ls -l \&| sed 1d) \&| column -t
88.Sh SEE ALSO
89.Xr colrm 1 ,
90.Xr ls 1 ,
91.Xr paste 1 ,
92.Xr sort 1
93.Sh HISTORY
94The
95.Nm
96command appeared in
97.Bx 4.3 Reno .
98.Sh BUGS
99Input lines are limited to
100.Dv LINE_MAX
101(2048) bytes in length.
102