NAME
jot —
print sequential or random
data
SYNOPSIS
jot |
[-cnr] [-b
word] [-w
word] [-s
string] [-p
precision] [reps
[begin [end
[s]]]] |
DESCRIPTION
Thejot utility is used to print out increasing,
decreasing, random, or redundant data, usually numbers, one per line.
The following options are available:
-r- Generate random data instead of the default sequential data.
-bword- Just print word repetitively.
-wword- Print word with the generated data appended to it. Octal, hexadecimal, exponential, ASCII, zero padded, and right-adjusted representations are possible by using the appropriate printf(3) conversion specification inside word, in which case the data are inserted rather than appended.
-c- This is an abbreviation for
-w%c. -sstring- Print data separated by string. Normally, newlines separate data.
-n- Do not print the final newline normally appended to the output.
-pprecision- Print only as many digits or characters of the data as indicated by the
integer precision. In the absence of
-p, the precision is the greater of the precisions of begin and end. The-poption is overridden by whatever appears in a printf(3) conversion following-w.
The last four arguments indicate, respectively, the number of
data, the lower bound, the upper bound, and the step size or, for random
data, the seed. While at least one of them must appear, any of the other
three may be omitted, and will be considered as such if given as
-. Any three of these arguments determines the
fourth. If four are specified and the given and computed values of
reps conflict, the lower value is used. If fewer than
three are specified, defaults are assigned left to right, except for
s, which assumes its default unless both
begin and end are given.
Defaults for the four arguments are, respectively, 100, 1, 100, and 1, except that when random data are requested, the seed, s, is picked randomly. The reps argument is expected to be an unsigned integer, and if given as zero is taken to be infinite. The begin and end arguments may be given as real numbers or as characters representing the corresponding value in ASCII. The last argument must be a real number.
Random numbers are obtained through
random(3). The name jot derives in part from
iota, a function in APL.
EXIT STATUS
The jot utility exits 0 on success,
and >0 if an error occurs.
EXAMPLES
The command
jot 21 -1 1.00prints 21 evenly spaced numbers increasing from -1 to 1. The ASCII character set is generated with
jot -c 128 0and the strings xaa through xaz with
jot -w xa%c 26 awhile 20 random 8-letter strings are produced with
jot -r -c 160 a z | rs -g 0
8Infinitely many yes's may be obtained through
jot -b yes 0and thirty ed(1) substitution commands applying to lines 2, 7, 12, etc. is the result of
jot -w %ds/old/new/ 30 2 -
5The stuttering sequence 9, 9, 8, 8, 7, etc. can be produced by suitable choice of step size, as in
jot - 9 0 -.5and a file containing exactly 1024 bytes is created with
jot -b x 512 > blockFinally, to set tabs four spaces apart starting from column 10 and ending in column 132, use
expand -`jot -s, - 10 132
4`and to print all lines 80 characters or longer,
grep `jot -s "" -b .
80`DIAGNOSTICS
The following diagnostic messages deserve special explanation:
- illegal or unsupported format '%s'
- The requested conversion format specifier for
printf(3) was not of the form
where “?” must be one of
%[#][ ][{+,-}][0-9]*[.[0-9]*]?or[l]{d,i,o,u,x}{c,e,f,g,D,E,G,O,U,X} - range error in conversion
- A value to be printed fell outside the range of the data type associated with the requested output format.
- too many conversions
- More than one conversion format specifier has been supplied, but only one is allowed.