PASTE(1) 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 character 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:
o The last newline character in a file will not
be modified.
o The delimiter will be reset to the first
element of list after each
file operand is
processed.
When the option is not specified:
o The
NEWLINE characters in the file specified
by the last
file will not be modified.
o The delimiter will be reset to the first
element of
list each time a line is processed
from each file.
If a backslash character appears in
list, it and the
character 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
unspecified.
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 otherwise
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
-. Implementations support pasting of
at least 12
file operands.
USAGE
See
largefile(7) for the description of the behavior of
paste when
encountering files greater than or equal to 2 Gbyte ( 2^31 bytes).
EXAMPLES
Example 1: Listing a directory in one column
example%
ls | paste -d" " - Example 2: Listing a directory in four columns
example%
ls | paste - - - - Example 3: Combining pairs of lines from a file into single lines
example%
paste -s -d"\ t\ n" fileENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
See
environ(7) for descriptions of the following environment
variables that affect the execution of
paste:
LANG,
LC_ALL,
LC_CTYPE,
LC_MESSAGES, and
NLSPATH.
EXIT STATUS
The following exit values are returned:
0 Successful completion.
>0 An error occurred.
ATTRIBUTES
See
attributes(7) for descriptions of the following attributes:
+--------------------+-----------------+
| ATTRIBUTE TYPE | ATTRIBUTE VALUE |
+--------------------+-----------------+
|CSI | Enabled |
+--------------------+-----------------+
|Interface Stability | Standard |
+--------------------+-----------------+
SEE ALSO
cut(1),
grep(1),
pr(1),
attributes(7),
environ(7),
largefile(7),
standards(7)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.
December 20, 1996 PASTE(1)
