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:
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 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: 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" file
ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
See environ(5) 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(5) for descriptions of the following attri-
butes:
____________________________________________________________
| ATTRIBUTE TYPE | ATTRIBUTE VALUE |
|_____________________________|_____________________________|
| Availability | SUNWesu |
|_____________________________|_____________________________|
| CSI | Enabled |
|_____________________________|_____________________________|
| Interface Stability | Standard |
|_____________________________|_____________________________|
SEE ALSO
cut(1), grep(1), pr(1), attributes(5), environ(5), large-
file(5), standards(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.
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