xref: /minix3/usr.bin/column/column.1 (revision 2cb302057cbf87e6c69e378aa99cacd675cc2a1b)
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30.\"     @(#)column.1	8.1 (Berkeley) 6/6/93
31.\"
32.Dd March 9, 2008
33.Dt COLUMN 1
34.Os
35.Sh NAME
36.Nm column
37.Nd columnate lists
38.Sh SYNOPSIS
39.Nm
40.Op Fl tx
41.Op Fl c Ar columns
42.Op Fl s Ar sep
43.Op Ar
44.Sh DESCRIPTION
45The
46.Nm
47utility formats its input into multiple columns.
48Rows are filled before columns.
49Input is taken from
50.Ar file
51operands, or, by default, from the standard input.
52Empty lines are ignored.
53.Pp
54The options are as follows:
55.Bl -tag -width Ds
56.It Fl c
57Output is formatted for a display
58.Ar columns
59wide.
60.It Fl s
61Specify a set of characters to be used to delimit columns for the
62.Fl t
63option.
64.It Fl t
65Determine the number of columns the input contains and create a table.
66Columns are delimited with whitespace, by default, or with the characters
67supplied using the
68.Fl s
69option.
70Useful for pretty-printing displays.
71.It Fl x
72Fill columns before filling rows.
73.El
74.Pp
75.Nm
76exits 0 on success, \*[Gt]0 if an error occurred.
77.Sh ENVIRONMENT
78.Bl -tag -width COLUMNS
79.It Ev COLUMNS
80The environment variable
81.Ev COLUMNS
82is used to determine the size of
83the screen if no other information is available.
84.El
85.Sh EXAMPLES
86.Dl (echo \&"PERM LINKS OWNER GROUP SIZE MONTH DAY HH:MM/YEAR NAME\&"\&;\ \&\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