paste(1) (Directory and File Management Utilities) paste(1)
NAME
paste - merge same lines of several files or subsequent lines of one
file
SYNOPSIS
paste file1 file2 ...
paste -dlist file1 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). If you will, it is the counterpart of cat(1) which
concatenates vertically, i.e., one file after the other. In the last
form above, paste replaces 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 file name.
The meanings of the options are:
-d Without this option, the new-line 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 new-line character, not from
the list. The list may contain the special escape sequences:
\n (new-line), \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 Merge 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 new-line.
- May be used in place of any file name, to read a line from the
standard input. (There is no prompting).
EXAMPLES
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paste(1) (Directory and File Management Utilities) paste(1)
ls | paste -d" " -
list directory in one column
ls | paste - - - -
list directory in four columns
paste -s -d"\t\n" file
combine pairs of lines into lines
SEE ALSO
cut(1), grep(1), pr(1).
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paste(1) (Directory and File Management Utilities) paste(1)
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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