paste

 

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 User Commands                                            paste(1)
 
 
 


NAME
      paste - merge corresponding or subsequent lines of files
 


SYNOPSIS
      paste [ -s ]  [ -d list ]  file ...
 


DESCRIPTION
      The paste utility will concatenate the  corresponding  lines
      of  the  given input files, and write the resulting lines to
      standard output.
 
      The  default  operation  of  paste  will   concatenate   the
      corresponding  lines of the input files. The NEWLINE charac-
      ter of every line except the line from the last  input  file
      will be replaced with a TAB character.
 
      If an EOF (end-of-file) condition is detected on one or more
      input  files,  but not all input files, paste will behave as
      though empty lines were read from the files on which EOF was
      detected, unless the -s option is specified.
 


OPTIONS
      The following options are supported:
 
      -d list
            Unless a backslash character (\) appears in list, each
            character in list is an element specifying a delimiter
            character. If a backslash character appears  in  list,
            the  backslash  character  and  one or more characters
            following it are an  element  specifying  a  delimiter
            character  as  described below. These elements specify
            one or more delimiters to use, instead of the  default
            TAB character, to replace the NEWLINE character of the
            input lines. The elements in list are used circularly;
            that  is, when the list is exhausted the first element
            from the list is reused.
 
            When the -s option is specified:
 
 
               +  The last newline character in a file will not be
                  modified.
 
               +  The delimiter will be reset to the first element
                  of list after each file operand is processed.
      When the option is not specified:
 
 
               +  The NEWLINE characters in the file specified  by
                  the last file will not be modified.
 
               +  The delimiter will be reset to the first element
 
 
 
 SunOS 5.8           Last change: 20 Dec 1996                    1
 
 
 
 
 
 
 User Commands                                            paste(1)
 
 
 
                  of  list each time a line is processed from each
                  file.
      If a backslash character appears in list, it and the charac-
      ter  following  it  will  be used to represent the following
      delimiter characters:
 
 
            \n    Newline character.
 
            \t    Tab character.
 
            \\    Backslash character.
 
            \0    Empty string (not a null character).  If  \0  is
                  immediately  followed  by  the  character x, the
                  character X, or any  character  defined  by  the
                  LC_CTYPE digit keyword, the results are unspeci-
                  fied.
 
            If any other  characters  follow  the  backslash,  the
            results are unspecified.
 
      -s    Concatenate all of the lines of  each  separate  input
            file  in  command line order. The NEWLINE character of
            every line except the last line  in  each  input  file
            will be replaced with the TAB character, unless other-
            wise specified by the -d option.
 


OPERANDS
      The following operand is supported:
 
      file  A path name of an input file. If -  is  specified  for
            one  or  more of the files, the standard input will be
            used; the standard input will be read one  line  at  a
            time,  circularly, for each instance of -. Implementa-
            tions support pasting of at least 12 file operands.
 
 USAGE
      See largefile(5) for the  description  of  the  behavior  of
      paste  when  encountering  files  greater than or equal to 2
      Gbyte ( 2**31 bytes).
 
 EXAMPLES
      Example 1: List a directory in one column.
 
           ls | paste -d" " -
 
 
      Example 2: List a directory in four columns.
 
           ls | paste - - - -
 
 
 
 
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 User Commands                                            paste(1)
 
 
 
      Example 3: Combine pairs of lines from a  file  into  single
      lines.
 
           paste -s -d"\t\n" file
 
 
 ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
      See environ(5) for descriptions of the following environment
      variables  that  affect the execution of paste: LC_CTYPE and
      LC_MESSAGES.
 
 EXIT STATUS
      The following exit values are returned:
 
      0     Successful completion.
 
      >0    An error occurred.
 


ATTRIBUTES
      See attributes(5) for descriptions of the  following  attri-
      butes:
 
      ____________________________________________________________
     |       ATTRIBUTE TYPE        |       ATTRIBUTE VALUE       |
     |_____________________________|_____________________________|
     | Availability                | SUNWesu                     |
     |_____________________________|_____________________________|
     | CSI                         | Enabled                     |
     |_____________________________|_____________________________|
 
 


SEE ALSO
      cut(1), grep(1), pr(1),  attributes(5),  environ(5),  large-
      file(5)
 


DIAGNOSTICS
      "line too long"
            Output lines are restricted to 511 characters.
 
      "too many files"
            Except for -s option, no more than 12 input files  may
            be specified.
 
      "no delimiters"
            The -d option was specified with an empty list.
 
      "cannot open file"
            The specified file cannot be opened.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 SunOS 5.8           Last change: 20 Dec 1996                    3
 
 
 

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