1COLUMN(1)                 BSD General Commands Manual                COLUMN(1)
2

NAME

4     column — columnate lists
5

SYNOPSIS

7     column [-tx] [-c columns] [-s sep] [file ...]
8

DESCRIPTION

10     The column utility formats its input into multiple columns.  Rows are
11     filled before columns.  Input is taken from file operands, or, by
12     default, from the standard input.  Empty lines are ignored.
13
14     The options are as follows:
15
16     -c      Output is formatted for a display columns wide.
17
18     -s      Specify a set of characters to be used to delimit columns for the
19             -t option.
20
21     -t      Determine the number of columns the input contains and create a
22             table.  Columns are delimited with whitespace, by default, or
23             with the characters supplied using the -s option.  Useful for
24             pretty-printing displays.
25
26     -x      Fill columns before filling rows.
27
28     Column exits 0 on success, >0 if an error occurred.
29

ENVIRONMENT

31     COLUMNS  The environment variable COLUMNS is used to determine the size
32              of the screen if no other information is available.
33

EXAMPLES

35           (printf "PERM LINKS OWNER GROUP SIZE MONTH DAY HH:MM/YEAR NAME\n" \
36           ; ls -l | sed 1d) | column -t
37

SEE ALSO

39     colrm(1), ls(1), paste(1), sort(1)
40

HISTORY

42     The column command appeared in 4.3BSD-Reno.
43
44BSD                              June 6, 1993                              BSD