Shell Programming and Scripting

[ctsgnb@shell ~/sand]$ cat tst
1
2
3
4
a
b
c
d
9
8
7
6
[ctsgnb@shell ~/sand]$ pr -3 -t tst
1                       a                       9
2                       b                       8
3                       c                       7
4                       d                       6
[ctsgnb@shell ~/sand]$

#!/usr/bin/env bash

# @(#) s2	Demonstrate splitting file into groups of lines.

# Utility functions: print-as-echo, print-line-with-visual-space, debug.
pe() { for i;do printf "%s" "$i";done; printf "\n"; }
pl() { pe;pe "-----" ;pe "$*"; }
db() { printf " db, ";for i;do printf "%s" "$i";done; printf "\n"; }
db() { : ; }
C=$HOME/bin/context && [ -f $C ] && . $C pr

FILE=${1-data1}
pl "  Data file $FILE:"

pl " Results of visually splitting file with pr:"
pr -3 -t $FILE

pl " Results of visually splitting file with pr, shorter page length:"
pr -3 -t -l 2 $FILE

exit 0

% ./s2

Environment: LC_ALL = C, LANG = C
(Versions displayed with local utility "version")
OS, ker|rel, machine: Linux, 2.6.26-2-amd64, x86_64
Distribution        : Debian GNU/Linux 5.0.7 (lenny) 
GNU bash 3.2.39
pr (GNU coreutils) 6.10

-----
  Data file data1:

-----
 Results of visually splitting file with pr:
1			a			9
2			b			8
3			c			7
4			d			6
5

-----
 Results of visually splitting file with pr, shorter page length:
1			3			5
2			4			a
b			d			8
c			9			7
6