Back to main site | Back to man page index

COLUMN(1)                                           User Commands                                           COLUMN(1)



NAME
       column - columnate lists

SYNOPSIS
       column [options] file...

DESCRIPTION
       The  column  utility formats its input into multiple columns.  Rows are filled before columns.  Input is taken
       from file or, by default, from standard input.  Empty lines are ignored.

OPTIONS
       -c, --columns width
              Output is formatted to a width specified as number of characters.

       -t, --table
              Determine the number of columns the input contains and create a  table.   Columns  are  delimited  with
              whitespace, by default, or with the characters supplied using the separator. Table output is useful for
              pretty-printing.

       -s, --separator separators
              Specify possible table delimiters (default is whitespace).

       -o, --output-separator separators
              Specify table output delimiter (default is two whitespaces).

       -x, --fillrows
              Fill columns before filling rows.

       -h, --help
              Print help and exit.

ENVIRONMENT
       The environment variable COLUMNS is used to determine the size of the screen if no other information is avail‐
       able.

EXAMPLES
       sed 's/#.*//' /etc/fstab | column -t

BUGS
       The util-linux version 2.23 changed -s option to be non-greedy, for example:

       $ printf "a:b:c\n1::3\n" | column  -t -s ':'

       old output:
       a  b  c
       1  3

       new output (since util-linux 2.23)
       a  b  c
       1     3

SEE ALSO
       colrm(1), ls(1), paste(1), sort(1)

HISTORY
       The column command appeared in 4.3BSD-Reno.