PASTE
Section: User Commands (1)
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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
- 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).
Index
- NAME
-
- SYNOPSIS
-
- DESCRIPTION
-
- EXAMPLES
-
- SEE ALSO
-
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Time: 19:56:17 GMT, January 31, 2023