PASTE(1) User Commands PASTE(1)

NAME

paste - merge corresponding or subsequent lines of files

SYNOPSIS

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

DESCRIPTION

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


The default operation of paste will concatenate the corresponding lines
of the input files. The NEWLINE character of every line except the line
from the last input file will be replaced with a TAB character.


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

OPTIONS

The following options are 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 character, to replace the NEWLINE
character of the input lines. The elements in list are used
circularly. That is, when the list is exhausted, the first
element from the list is reused.

When the -s option is specified:

o The last newline character in a file will not be
modified.

o The delimiter will be reset to the first element
of list after each file operand is processed.
When the option is not specified:

o The NEWLINE characters in the file specified by
the last file will not be modified.

o The delimiter will 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 will be used to represent the
following delimiter characters:

\n
Newline character.


\t
Tab character.


\\
Backslash character.


\0
Empty string (not a null character). If \0 is
immediately followed by the character x, the
character X, or any character defined by the
LC_CTYPE digit keyword, 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 character of every line
except the last line in each input file will be replaced with
the TAB character, unless otherwise specified by the -d
option.

OPERANDS

The following operand is supported:

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

USAGE

See largefile(7) for the description of the behavior of paste when
encountering files greater than or equal to 2 Gbyte ( 2^31 bytes).

EXAMPLES

Example 1: Listing a directory in one column

example% ls | paste -d" " -

Example 2: Listing a directory in four columns

example% ls | paste - - - -

Example 3: Combining pairs of lines from a file into single lines

example% paste -s -d"\ t\ n" file

ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES

See environ(7) for descriptions of the following environment variables
that affect the execution of paste: LANG, LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE, LC_MESSAGES,
and NLSPATH.

EXIT STATUS

The following exit values are returned:

0
Successful completion.


>0
An error occurred.

ATTRIBUTES

See attributes(7) for descriptions of the following attributes:


+--------------------+-----------------+
| ATTRIBUTE TYPE | ATTRIBUTE VALUE |
+--------------------+-----------------+
|CSI | Enabled |
+--------------------+-----------------+
|Interface Stability | Standard |
+--------------------+-----------------+

SEE ALSO

cut(1), grep(1), pr(1), attributes(7), environ(7), largefile(7),
standards(7)

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.


"no delimiters"
The -d option was specified with an empty list.


"cannot open file"
The specified file cannot be opened.


December 20, 1996 PASTE(1)