1paste(1) User Commands paste(1)
2
6 paste - merge corresponding or subsequent lines of files
7
9 paste [-s] [-d list] file...
10
13 The paste utility will concatenate the corresponding lines of the given
14 input files, and write the resulting lines to standard output.
15 The default operation of paste will concatenate the corresponding lines
18 of the input files. The NEWLINE character of every line except the line
19 from the last input file will be replaced with a TAB character.
20 If an EOF (end-of-file) condition is detected on one or more input
23 files, but not all input files, paste will behave as though empty lines
24 were read from the files on which EOF was detected, unless the -s
25 option is specified.
26
28 The following options are supported:
29 -d list Unless a backslash character (\) appears in list, each
31 character in list is an element specifying a delimiter
32 character. If a backslash character appears in list, the
33 backslash character and one or more characters following it
34 are an element specifying a delimiter character as
35 described below. These elements specify one or more delim‐
36 iters to use, instead of the default TAB character, to
37 replace the NEWLINE character of the input lines. The ele‐
38 ments in list are used circularly. That is, when the list
39 is exhausted, the first element from the list is reused.
40 When the -s option is specified:
42 o The last newline character in a file will not be
44 modified.
45 o The delimiter will be reset to the first element
47 of list after each file operand is processed.
48 When the option is not specified:
49 o The NEWLINE characters in the file specified by
51 the last file will not be modified.
52 o The delimiter will be reset to the first element
54 of list each time a line is processed from each
55 file.
56 If a backslash character appears in list, it and the char‐
57 acter following it will be used to represent the following
58 delimiter characters:
59 \n Newline character.
61 \t Tab character.
64 \\ Backslash character.
67 \0 Empty string (not a null character). If \0 is
70 immediately followed by the character x, the char‐
71 acter X, or any character defined by the LC_CTYPE
72 digit keyword, the results are unspecified.
73 If any other characters follow the backslash, the results
75 are unspecified.
76 -s Concatenate all of the lines of each separate input file in
79 command line order. The NEWLINE character of every line
80 except the last line in each input file will be replaced
81 with the TAB character, unless otherwise specified by the
82 -d option.
83
86 The following operand is supported:
87 file A path name of an input file. If − is specified for one or
89 more of the files, the standard input will be used. The stan‐
90 dard input will be read one line at a time, circularly, for
91 each instance of −. Implementations support pasting of at
92 least 12 file operands.
93
96 See largefile(5) for the description of the behavior of paste when
97 encountering files greater than or equal to 2 Gbyte ( 2^31 bytes).
98
100 Example 1 Listing a directory in one column
101 example% ls | paste -d" " −
103 Example 2 Listing a directory in four columns
107 example% ls | paste − − − −
109 Example 3 Combining pairs of lines from a file into single lines
113 example% paste -s -d"\ t\ n" file
115
119 See environ(5) for descriptions of the following environment variables
120 that affect the execution of paste: LANG, LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE, LC_MES‐
121 SAGES, and NLSPATH.
122
124 The following exit values are returned:
125 0 Successful completion.
127 >0 An error occurred.
130
133 See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attributes:
134 ┌─────────────────────────────┬─────────────────────────────┐
139 │ ATTRIBUTE TYPE │ ATTRIBUTE VALUE │
140 ├─────────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────┤
141 │Availability │SUNWesu │
142 ├─────────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────┤
143 │CSI │Enabled │
144 ├─────────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────┤
145 │Interface Stability │Standard │
146 └─────────────────────────────┴─────────────────────────────┘
147
149 cut(1), grep(1), pr(1), attributes(5), environ(5), largefile(5), stan‐
150 dards(5)
151
153 "line too long" Output lines are restricted to 511 characters.
154 "too many files" Except for -s option, no more than 12 input files
157 may be specified.
158 "no delimiters" The -d option was specified with an empty list.
161 "cannot open file" The specified file cannot be opened.
164SunOS 5.11 20 Dec 1996 paste(1)