PASTE(1) BSD General Commands Manual PASTE(1)NAME
paste -- merge corresponding or subsequent lines of files
SYNOPSIS
paste [-s] [-d list] file ...
DESCRIPTION
The paste utility concatenates the corresponding lines of the given input files, replacing all but the last file's newline characters with a
single tab character, and writes the resulting lines to standard output. If end-of-file is reached on an input file while other input files
still contain data, the file is treated as if it were an endless source of empty lines.
The options are as follows:
-d list Use one or more of the provided characters to replace the newline characters instead of the default tab. The characters in list
are used circularly, i.e., when list is exhausted the first character from list is reused. This continues until a line from the
last input file (in default operation) or the last line in each file (using the -s option) is displayed, at which time paste
begins selecting characters from the beginning of list again.
The following special characters can also be used in list:
newline character
tab character
\ backslash character
Empty string (not a null character).
Any other character preceded by a backslash is equivalent to the character itself.
-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 is replaced with the tab character, unless otherwise specified by the -d option.
If '-' is specified for one or more of the input files, the standard input is used; standard input is read one line at a time, circularly,
for each instance of '-'.
The paste utility exits 0 on success, and >0 if an error occurs.
SEE ALSO cut(1)STANDARDS
The paste utility is expected to be IEEE Std 1003.2 (``POSIX.2'') compatible.
BSD June 6, 1993 BSD
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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 charac-
ter, 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:
Newline character.
Tab character.
\ 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, 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(5) 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(5) for descriptions of the following environment variables that affect the execution of paste: LANG, LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE, LC_MES-
SAGES, and NLSPATH.
EXIT STATUS
The following exit values are returned:
0 Successful completion.
>0 An error occurred.
ATTRIBUTES
See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attributes:
+-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
| ATTRIBUTE TYPE | ATTRIBUTE VALUE |
+-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
|Availability |SUNWesu |
+-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
|CSI |Enabled |
+-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
|Interface Stability |Standard |
+-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
SEE ALSO cut(1), grep(1), pr(1), attributes(5), environ(5), largefile(5), standards(5)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.
SunOS 5.10 20 Dec 1996 paste(1)