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 characters.

-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/.