PASTE(1P)						     POSIX Programmer's Manual							 PASTE(1P)

PROLOG

       This  manual page is part of the POSIX Programmer's Manual.  The Linux implementation of this interface may differ (consult the correspond-
       ing Linux manual page for details of Linux behavior), or the interface may not be implemented on Linux.

NAME

       paste - merge corresponding or subsequent lines of files

SYNOPSIS

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

DESCRIPTION

       The paste utility shall concatenate the corresponding lines of the given input files, and write the resulting lines to standard output.

       The default operation of paste shall concatenate the corresponding lines of the input files. The <newline> of every line  except  the  line
       from the last input file shall be replaced with a <tab>.

       If  an end-of-file condition is detected on one or more input files, but not all input files, paste shall behave as though empty lines were
       read from the files on which end-of-file was detected, unless the -s option is specified.

OPTIONS

       The paste utility shall conform to the Base Definitions volume of IEEE Std 1003.1-2001, Section 12.2, Utility Syntax Guidelines.

       The following options shall be 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>,  to  replace  the
	      <newline>  of  the input lines. The elements in list shall be 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> in a file shall not be modified.

	       * The delimiter shall be reset to the first element of list after each file operand is processed.

       When the -s option is not specified:

	       * The <newline>s in the file specified by the last file operand shall not be modified.

	       * The delimiter shall 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 shall be used to represent the following delimiter characters:

       

	      <newline>.

       	
	      <tab>.

       \
	      Backslash character.

       
	      Empty string (not a null character). If '' is immediately followed by the character 'x',  the  character  'X',	or  any  character
	      defined  by the LC_CTYPE digit keyword (see the Base Definitions volume of IEEE Std 1003.1-2001, Chapter 7, Locale), 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> of every line except the last line	in
	      each input file shall be replaced with the <tab>, unless otherwise specified by the -d option.

OPERANDS

       The following operand shall be supported:

       file   A  pathname of an input file. If '-' is specified for one or more of the files, the standard input shall be used; the standard input
	      shall be read one line at a time, circularly, for each instance of '-' . Implementations shall support pasting of at least  12  file
	      operands.

STDIN

       The standard input shall be used only if one or more file operands is '-' . See the INPUT FILES section.

INPUT FILES

       The input files shall be text files, except that line lengths shall be unlimited.

ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES

       The following environment variables shall affect the execution of paste:

       LANG   Provide  a  default  value  for  the  internationalization  variables  that  are	unset or null. (See the Base Definitions volume of
	      IEEE Std 1003.1-2001, Section 8.2, Internationalization Variables for the  precedence  of  internationalization  variables  used	to
	      determine the values of locale categories.)

       LC_ALL If set to a non-empty string value, override the values of all the other internationalization variables.

       LC_CTYPE
	      Determine the locale for the interpretation of sequences of bytes of text data as characters (for example, single-byte as opposed to
	      multi-byte characters in arguments and input files).

       LC_MESSAGES
	      Determine the locale that should be used to affect the format and contents of diagnostic messages written to standard error.

       NLSPATH
	      Determine the location of message catalogs for the processing of LC_MESSAGES .

ASYNCHRONOUS EVENTS

       Default.

STDOUT

       Concatenated lines of input files shall be separated by the <tab> (or other characters under the control of the -d option)  and	terminated
       by a <newline>.

STDERR

       The standard error shall be used only for diagnostic messages.

OUTPUT FILES

       None.

EXTENDED DESCRIPTION

       None.

EXIT STATUS

       The following exit values shall be returned:

	0     Successful completion.

       >0     An error occurred.

CONSEQUENCES OF ERRORS

       If  one	or more input files cannot be opened when the -s option is not specified, a diagnostic message shall be written to standard error,
       but no output is written to standard output. If the -s option is specified, the paste utility shall provide the default behavior  described
       in Utility Description Defaults .

       The following sections are informative.

APPLICATION USAGE

       When  the escape sequences of the list option-argument are used in a shell script, they must be quoted; otherwise, the shell treats the ''
       as a special character.

       Conforming applications should only use the specific backslash escaped delimiters presented in this volume of IEEE Std 1003.1-2001. Histor-
       ical  implementations  treat 'x', where 'x' is not in this list, as 'x', but future implementations are free to expand this list to recog-
       nize other common escapes similar to those accepted by printf and other standard utilities.

       Most of the standard utilities work on text files. The cut utility can be used to turn files with arbitrary line lengths into a set of text
       files  containing  the  same data. The paste utility can be used to create (or recreate) files with arbitrary line lengths. For example, if
       file contains long lines:

	      cut -b 1-500 -n file > file1
	      cut -b 501- -n file > file2

       creates file1 (a text file) with lines no longer than 500 bytes (plus the <newline>) and file2 that contains the remainder of the data from
       file.  Note  that file2 is not a text file if there are lines in file that are longer than 500 + {LINE_MAX} bytes. The original file can be
       recreated from file1 and file2 using the command:

	      paste -d "" file1 file2 > file

       The commands:

	      paste -d "" ...
	      paste -d "" ...

       are not necessarily equivalent; the latter is not specified by this volume of IEEE Std 1003.1-2001 and may result in  an  error.  The  con-
       struct '' is used to mean "no separator" because historical versions of paste did not follow the syntax guidelines, and the command:

	      paste -d"" ...

       could not be handled properly by getopt().

EXAMPLES

	1. Write out a directory in four columns:

	   ls | paste - - - -

	2. Combine pairs of lines from a file into single lines:

	   paste -s -d "	
" file

RATIONALE

       None.

FUTURE DIRECTIONS

       None.

SEE ALSO

       Utility Description Defaults, cut, grep, pr

COPYRIGHT

       Portions of this text are reprinted and reproduced in electronic form from IEEE Std 1003.1, 2003 Edition, Standard for Information Technol-
       ogy -- Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX), The Open Group Base Specifications Issue 6, Copyright (C) 2001-2003 by the Institute of
       Electrical  and	Electronics  Engineers, Inc and The Open Group. In the event of any discrepancy between this version and the original IEEE
       and The Open Group Standard, the original IEEE and The Open Group Standard is the referee document. The original Standard can  be  obtained
       online at http://www.opengroup.org/unix/online.html .

IEEE
/The Open Group						       2003								 PASTE(1P)