COLUMN(1)							   User Commands							 COLUMN(1)

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
1::3
" | 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/.

util-linux							   October 2010 							 COLUMN(1)