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 charac‐
              ters.

       -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 available.

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.

AVAILABILITY
       The  column  command is part of the util-linux package and is available
       from ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux/.



util-linux                       October 2010                        COLUMN(1)