NAME

     column — columnate lists

SYNOPSIS

     column [-entx] [-c columns] [-s sep] [file ...]

DESCRIPTION

     The column utility formats its input into multiple columns.  Rows are filled before columns.
     Input is taken from file operands, or, by default, from the standard input.  Empty lines are
     ignored unless the -e option is used.

     The options are as follows:

     -c      Output is formatted for a display columns wide.

     -s      Specify a set of characters to be used to delimit columns for the -t option.

     -t      Determine the number of columns the input contains and create a table.  Columns are
             delimited with whitespace, by default, or with the characters supplied using the -s
             option.  Useful for pretty-printing displays.

     -x      Fill columns before filling rows.

     -n      By default, the column command will merge multiple adjacent delimiters into a single
             delimiter when using the -t option; this option disables that behavior. This option
             is a Debian GNU/Linux extension.

     -e      Do not ignore empty lines.

ENVIRONMENT

     The COLUMNS, LANG, LC_ALL and LC_CTYPE environment variables affect the execution of column
     as described in environ(7).

EXIT STATUS

     The column utility exits 0 on success, and >0 if an error occurs.

EXAMPLES

           (printf "PERM LINKS OWNER GROUP SIZE MONTH DAY " ; \
           printf "HH:MM/YEAR NAME\n" ; \
           ls -l | sed 1d) | column -t

SEE ALSO

     colrm(1), ls(1), paste(1), sort(1)

HISTORY

     The column command appeared in 4.3BSD-Reno.

BUGS

     Input lines are limited to 512 times LINE_MAX (1M) wide characters in length.