1col(1) User Commands col(1)
2
6 col - reverse line-feeds filter
7
9 col [-bfpx]
10
13 The col utility reads from the standard input and writes to the stan‐
14 dard output. It performs the line overlays implied by reverse line-
15 feeds, and by forward and reverse half-line-feeds. Unless -x is used,
16 all blank characters in the input will be converted to tab characters
17 wherever possible. col is particularly useful for filtering multi-col‐
18 umn output made with the .rt command of nroff(1) and output resulting
19 from use of the tbl(1) preprocessor.
20 The ASCII control characters SO and SI are assumed by col to start and
23 end text in an alternative character set. The character set to which
24 each input character belongs is remembered, and on output SI and SO
25 characters are generated as appropriate to ensure that each character
26 is written in the correct character set.
27 On input, the only control characters accepted are space, backspace,
30 tab, carriage-return and newline characters, SI, SO, VT, reverse line-
31 feed, forward half-line-feed and reverse half-line-feed. The VT charac‐
32 ter is an alternative form of full reverse line-feed, included for com‐
33 patibility with some earlier programs of this type. The only other
34 characters to be copied to the output are those that are printable.
35 The ASCII codes for the control functions and line-motion sequences
38 mentioned above are as given in the table below. ESC stands for the
39 ASCII escape character, with the octal code 033; ESC− means a sequence
40 of two characters, ESC followed by the character x.
41 reverse line-feed ESC−7
46 reverse half-line-feed ESC−8
47 forward half-line-feed ESC−9
48 vertical-tab (VT) 013
49 start-of-text (SO) 016
50 end-of-text (SI) 017
51
54 -b Assume that the output device in use is not capable of backspac‐
55 ing. In this case, if two or more characters are to appear in
56 the same place, only the last one read will be output.
57 -f Although col accepts half-line motions in its input, it normally
60 does not emit them on output. Instead, text that would appear
61 between lines is moved to the next lower full-line boundary.
62 This treatment can be suppressed by the -f (fine) option; in
63 this case, the output from col may contain forward half-line-
64 feeds (ESC-9), but will still never contain either kind of
65 reverse line motion.
66 -p Normally, col will ignore any escape sequences unknown to it
69 that are found in its input; the -p option may be used to cause
70 col to output these sequences as regular characters, subject to
71 overprinting from reverse line motions. The use of this option
72 is highly discouraged unless the user is fully aware of the tex‐
73 tual position of the escape sequences.
74 -x Prevent col from converting blank characters to tab characters
77 on output wherever possible. Tab stops are considered to be at
78 each column position n such that n modulo 8 equals 1.
79
82 See environ(5) for descriptions of the following environment variables
83 that affect the execution of col: LC_CTYPE, LC_MESSAGES, and NLSPATH.
84
86 The following error values are returned:
87 0 Successful completion.
89 >0 An error occurred.
92
95 See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attributes:
96 ┌─────────────────────────────┬─────────────────────────────┐
101 │ ATTRIBUTE TYPE │ ATTRIBUTE VALUE │
102 ├─────────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────┤
103 │Availability │SUNWesu │
104 │CSI │enabled │
105 └─────────────────────────────┴─────────────────────────────┘
106
108 nroff(1), tbl(1), ascii(5), attributes(5), environ(5)
109
111 The input format accepted by col matches the output produced by nroff
112 with either the -T37 or -Tlp options. Use -T37 (and the -f option of
113 col) if the ultimate disposition of the output of col will be a device
114 that can interpret half-line motions, and -Tlp otherwise.
115 col cannot back up more than 128 lines or handle more than 800 charac‐
118 ters per line.
119 Local vertical motions that would result in backing up over the first
122 line of the document are ignored. As a result, the first line must not
123 have any superscripts.
124SunOS 5.11 1 Feb 1995 col(1)