PASTE(CT) XENIX System V PASTE(CT)
Name
paste - Merges lines of files.
Syntax
paste file1 file2 ...
paste-dle1 file2 ...
paste-s [-dlist] file1 file2 ...
Description
In the first two forms, paste concatenates corresponding
lines of the given input files file1, file2, etc. It treats
each file as a column or columns of a table and pastes them
together horizontally (parallel merging). It is the
counterpart of cat(C) which concatenates vertically, i.e.,
one file after the other. In the last form above, paste
subsumes the function of an older command with the same name
by combining subsequent lines of the input file (serial
merging). In all cases, lines are glued together with the
tab character, or with characters from an optionally
specified list. Output is to the standard output, so it can
be used as the start of a pipe, or as a filter, if - is used
in place of a filename.
The meanings of the options are:
-d Without this option, the newline characters of each but
the last file (or last line in case of the -s option)
are replaced by a tab character. This option allows
replacing the tab character by one or more alternate
characters. (See below.)
list One or more characters immediately following -d replace
the default tab as the line concatenation character.
The list is used circularly, i. e. when exhausted, it
is reused. In parallel merging (i. e. no -s option),
the lines from the last file are always terminated with
a newline character, not from the list. The list may
contain the special escape sequences: \n (newline), \t
(tab), \\ (backslash), and \0 (empty string, not a null
character). Quoting may be necessary, if characters
have special meaning to the shell (e.g. to get one
backslash, use -d"\\\\" ).
-s Merges subsequent lines rather than one from each input
file. Use tab for concatenation, unless a list is
specified with -d option. Regardless of the list, the
very last character of the file is forced to be a
newline.
- May be used in place of any filename to read a line
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PASTE(CT) XENIX System V PASTE(CT)
from the standard input. (There is no prompting.)
Examples
ls | paste -d" " -
Lists directory in one column
ls | paste - - - -
Lists directory in four columns
paste-s -d"\t\n" file
Combines pairs of lines into lines
See Also
cut(CT), grep(C), pr(C)
Diagnostics
line too long
Output lines are restricted to 511 characters.
too many files
Except for -s option, no more than 12 input files
may be specified.
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