PASTE(1)						    BSD General Commands Manual 						  PASTE(1)

NAME

     paste -- merge corresponding or subsequent lines of files

SYNOPSIS

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

DESCRIPTION

     The paste utility concatenates the corresponding lines of the given input files, replacing all but the last file's newline characters with a
     single tab character, and writes the resulting lines to standard output.  If end-of-file is reached on an input file while other input files
     still contain data, the file is treated as if it were an endless source of empty lines.

     The options are as follows:

     -d list	 Use one or more of the provided characters to replace the newline characters instead of the default tab.  The characters in list
		 are used circularly, i.e., when list is exhausted the first character from list is reused.  This continues until a line from the
		 last input file (in default operation) or the last line in each file (using the -s option) is displayed, at which time paste
		 begins selecting characters from the beginning of list again.

		 The following special characters can also be used in list:

		 
    newline character
		 	    tab character
		 \    backslash character
		     Empty string (not a null character).

		 Any other character preceded by a backslash is equivalent to the character itself.

     -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 is replaced with the tab character, unless otherwise specified by the -d option.

     If '-' is specified for one or more of the input files, the standard input is used; standard input is read one line at a time, circularly,
     for each instance of '-'.

EXAMPLES

     List the files in the current directory in three columns:

	   ls | paste - - -

     Combine pairs of lines from a file into single lines:

	   paste -s -d '	
' myfile

     Number the lines in a file, similar to nl(1):

	   sed = myfile | paste -s -d '	
' - -

     Create a colon-separated list of directories named bin, suitable for use in the PATH environment variable:

	   find / -name bin -type d | paste -s -d : -

DIAGNOSTICS

     The paste utility exits 0 on success, and >0 if an error occurs.

SEE ALSO

     cut(1), lam(1)

STANDARDS

     The paste utility is expected to be IEEE Std 1003.2 (``POSIX.2'') compatible.

HISTORY

     A paste command appeared in Version 32V AT&T UNIX.

BUGS

     Multibyte character delimiters cannot be specified with the -d option.

BSD
								September 20, 2001							       BSD