centos man page for column

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)