Manual Pages for UNIX Operating System command usage for man col

User Commands                                              col(1)



NAME
     col - reverse line-feeds filter

SYNOPSIS
     col [-bfpx]


DESCRIPTION
     The col utility reads from the standard input and writes  to
     the  standard  output. It performs the line overlays implied
     by reverse line-feeds, and  by  forward  and  reverse  half-
     line-feeds.  Unless  -x is used, all blank characters in the
     input will be converted to tab characters wherever possible.
     col is particularly useful for filtering multi-column output
     made with the .rt command of nroff(1) and  output  resulting
     from use of the tbl(1) preprocessor.


     The ASCII control characters SO and SI are assumed by col to
     start  and  end  text  in  an alternative character set. The
     character set to  which  each  input  character  belongs  is
     remembered, and on output SI and SO characters are generated
     as appropriate to ensure that each character is  written  in
     the correct character set.


     On input, the only control characters  accepted  are  space,
     backspace,  tab, carriage-return and newline characters, SI,
     SO,  VT,  reverse  line-feed,  forward  half-line-feed   and
     reverse  half-line-feed.  The VT character is an alternative
     form of full reverse line-feed, included  for  compatibility
     with  some  earlier  programs  of  this type. The only other
     characters to be copied to the output  are  those  that  are
     printable.


     The ASCII codes for the control  functions  and  line-motion
     sequences  mentioned  above are as given in the table below.
     ESC stands for the ASCII escape character,  with  the  octal
     code  033; ESC- means a sequence of two characters, ESC fol-
     lowed by the character x.



     reverse line-feed             ESC-7
     reverse half-line-feed        ESC-8
     forward half-line-feed        ESC-9
     vertical-tab (VT)             013
     start-of-text (SO)            016
     end-of-text (SI)              017





SunOS 5.11           Last change: 1 Feb 1995                    1






User Commands                                              col(1)



OPTIONS
     -b     Assume that the output device in use is  not  capable
            of  backspacing. In this case, if two or more charac-
            ters are to appear in the same place, only  the  last
            one read will be output.


     -f     Although col accepts half-line motions in its  input,
            it  normally  does  not emit them on output. Instead,
            text that would appear between lines is moved to  the
            next  lower full-line boundary. This treatment can be
            suppressed by the -f (fine) option; in this case, the
            output  from  col may contain forward half-line-feeds
            (ESC-9), but will still never contain either kind  of
            reverse line motion.


     -p     Normally,  col  will  ignore  any  escape   sequences
            unknown  to  it  that  are found in its input; the -p
            option may be used  to  cause  col  to  output  these
            sequences  as  regular  characters,  subject to over-
            printing from reverse line motions. The use  of  this
            option is highly discouraged unless the user is fully
            aware  of  the  textual  position   of   the   escape
            sequences.


     -x     Prevent col from converting blank characters  to  tab
            characters on output wherever possible. Tab stops are
            considered to be at each column position n such  that
            n modulo 8 equals 1.


ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
     See environ(5) for descriptions of the following environment
     variables  that  affect  the  execution  of  col:  LC_CTYPE,
     LC_MESSAGES, and NLSPATH.

EXIT STATUS
     The following error values are returned:

     0      Successful completion.


     >0     An error occurred.


ATTRIBUTES
     See attributes(5) for descriptions of the  following  attri-
     butes:





SunOS 5.11           Last change: 1 Feb 1995                    2






User Commands                                              col(1)



     ________________________________________________________________
    |       ATTRIBUTE TYPE        |         ATTRIBUTE VALUE         |
    |_____________________________|_________________________________|
    | Availability                | system/extended-system-utilities|
    | CSI                         | enabled                         |
    |_____________________________|_________________________________|


SEE ALSO
     nroff(1), tbl(1), ascii(5), attributes(5), environ(5)

NOTES
     The input format accepted by col matches the output produced
     by nroff with either the -T37 or -Tlp options. Use -T37 (and
     the -f option of col) if the  ultimate  disposition  of  the
     output  of col will be a device that can interpret half-line
     motions, and -Tlp otherwise.


     col cannot back up more than 128 lines or handle  more  than
     800 characters per line.


     Local vertical motions that would result in backing up  over
     the first line of the document are ignored. As a result, the
     first line must not have any superscripts.





























SunOS 5.11           Last change: 1 Feb 1995                    3