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.\"     @(#)column.1	8.1 (Berkeley) 6/6/93
.\" $FreeBSD$
.\"
.\" Portions Copyright (c) 2013 Joyent, Inc.  All rights reserved.
.\"
.TH COLUMN 1 "Jan 10, 2013"
.SH NAME
column \- columnate lists
.SH SYNOPSIS
.LP
.nf
\fBcolumn\fR [\fB-tx\fR] [\fB-c\fR \fIcolumns\fR] [\fB-s\fR \fIsep\fR] [\fIfile\fR ... ]
.fi

.SH DESCRIPTION
.sp
.LP
The \fBcolumn\fR
utility formats its input into multiple columns.
Rows are filled before columns.
Input is taken from
\fIfile\fR
operands, or, by default, from the standard input.
Empty lines are ignored.
.SH OPTIONS
.sp
.LP
The options are as follows:
.sp
.ne 2
.na
\fB\fB-c\fR \fIcolumns\fR\fR
.ad
.RS 17n
Output is formatted for a display \fIcolumns\fR
wide.
.RE

.sp
.ne 2
.na
\fB\fB-s\fR \fIsep\fR\fR
.ad
.RS 17n
Specify a set of characters to be used to delimit columns for the
\fB-t\fR option.
.RE

.sp
.ne 2
.na
\fB\fB-t\fR\fR
.ad
.RS 17n
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 \fBs\fR
option.
Useful for pretty-printing displays.
.RE

.sp
.ne 2
.na
\fB-x\fR
.ad
.RS 17n
Fill columns before filling rows.
.RE

.SH ENVIRONMENT
The COLUMNS , LANG , LC_ALL
and
LC_CTYPE
environment variables affect the execution of
\fBcolumn\fR
as described in
\fBenviron\fR(5).

.SH EXIT STATUS
The \fBcolumn\fR utility exits 0 on success and >0 if an error occurs.

.SH EXAMPLES
.sp
.in +2
.nf
(printf \&"PERM LINKS OWNER GROUP SIZE MONTH DAY \&"\ \&;\ \&\e
printf \&"HH:MM/YEAR NAME\en\&"\ \&;\ \&\e
ls -l \&| sed 1d) \&| column -t
.fi
.in -2
.sp


.SH SEE ALSO
\fBls\fR(1), \fBpaste\fR(1), \fBsort\fR(1)

.SH HISTORY
The \fBcolumn\fR command appeared in 4.3BSD-Reno.

.SH BUGS
Input lines are limited to LINE_MAX bytes in length.