NAME
paste —
merge corresponding or subsequent lines
of files
SYNOPSIS
paste |
[-s] [-d
list] file ... |
DESCRIPTION
Thepaste 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:
-dlist- 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
-soption) is displayed, at which timepastebegins selecting characters from the beginning of list again.The following special characters can also be used in list:
\n- newline character
\t- tab character
\\- backslash character
\0- 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
-doption.
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
‘-’.
EXIT STATUS
The paste utility exits 0 on
success, and >0 if an error occurs.
EXAMPLES
List the files in the current directory in three columns:
ls | paste - - -Combine pairs of lines from a file into single lines:
paste -s -d '\t\n'
myfileNumber the lines in a file, similar to nl(1):
sed = myfile | paste -s -d '\t\n' -
-Create a colon-separated list of directories named
bin, suitable for use in the
PATH environment variable:
find / -name bin -type d | paste -s
-d : -SEE ALSO
STANDARDS
The paste utility is expected to be
IEEE Std 1003.2 (“POSIX.2”)
compatible.
HISTORY
A paste command appeared in
Version 7 AT&T UNIX/32V.