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PROLOG

       This  manual  page  is part of the POSIX Programmer's Manual.  The Linux implementation of
       this interface may differ (consult the corresponding Linux  manual  page  for  details  of
       Linux behavior), or the interface may not be implemented on Linux.

NAME

       paste — merge corresponding or subsequent lines of files

SYNOPSIS

       paste [-s] [-d list] file...

DESCRIPTION

       The  paste utility shall concatenate the corresponding lines of the given input files, and
       write the resulting lines to standard output.

       The default operation of paste shall concatenate the  corresponding  lines  of  the  input
       files.  The  <newline>  of  every  line  except the line from the last input file shall be
       replaced with a <tab>.

       If an end-of-file condition is detected on one or more input  files,  but  not  all  input
       files,  paste shall behave as though empty lines were read from the files on which end-of-
       file was detected, unless the -s option is specified.

OPTIONS

       The paste utility shall conform to the Base Definitions volume  of  POSIX.1‐2017,  Section
       12.2, Utility Syntax Guidelines.

       The following options shall be supported:

       -d list   Unless  a  <backslash>  character  appears in list, each character in list is an
                 element specifying a delimiter character. If a <backslash> character appears  in
                 list,  the  <backslash> character and one or more characters following it are an
                 element specifying a delimiter character  as  described  below.  These  elements
                 specify  one or more delimiters to use, instead of the default <tab>, to replace
                 the <newline> of the input lines. The elements in list shall be used circularly;
                 that  is,  when the list is exhausted the first element from the list is reused.
                 When the -s option is specified:

                  *  The last <newline> in a file shall not be modified.

                  *  The delimiter shall be reset to the first element of list  after  each  file
                     operand is processed.

                 When the -s option is not specified:

                  *  The  <newline>  characters  in  the  file specified by the last file operand
                     shall not be modified.

                  *  The delimiter shall be reset to the first element of list each time  a  line
                     is processed from each file.

                 If  a  <backslash>  character appears in list, it and the character following it
                 shall be used to represent the following delimiter characters:

                 \n    <newline>.

                 \t    <tab>.

                 \\    <backslash> character.

                 \0    Empty string (not a null character). If '\0' is  immediately  followed  by
                       the  character  'x',  the  character  'X', or any character defined by the
                       LC_CTYPE digit keyword (see the Base Definitions volume  of  POSIX.1‐2017,
                       Chapter 7, Locale), the results are unspecified.

                 If any other characters follow the <backslash>, the results are unspecified.

       -s        Concatenate  all  of  the lines from each input file into one line of output per
                 file, in command line order. The <newline> of every line except the last line in
                 each  input  file  shall be replaced with a <tab>, unless otherwise specified by
                 the -d option. If an input file is empty, the output line corresponding to  that
                 file shall consist of only a <newline> character.

OPERANDS

       The following operand shall be supported:

       file      A  pathname  of an input file. If '-' is specified for one or more of the files,
                 the standard input shall be used; the standard input shall be read one line at a
                 time,  circularly,  for  each  instance  of  '-'.  Implementations shall support
                 pasting of at least 12 file operands.

STDIN

       The standard input shall be used only if one or more file operands is '-'.  See the  INPUT
       FILES section.

INPUT FILES

       The input files shall be text files, except that line lengths shall be unlimited.

ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES

       The following environment variables shall affect the execution of paste:

       LANG      Provide a default value for the internationalization variables that are unset or
                 null.  (See  the  Base  Definitions  volume  of   POSIX.1‐2017,   Section   8.2,
                 Internationalization  Variables the precedence of internationalization variables
                 used to determine the values of locale categories.)

       LC_ALL    If set to a non-empty string  value,  override  the  values  of  all  the  other
                 internationalization variables.

       LC_CTYPE  Determine  the  locale for the interpretation of sequences of bytes of text data
                 as characters (for example, single-byte as opposed to multi-byte  characters  in
                 arguments and input files).

       LC_MESSAGES
                 Determine  the  locale  that should be used to affect the format and contents of
                 diagnostic messages written to standard error.

       NLSPATH   Determine the location of message catalogs for the processing of LC_MESSAGES.

ASYNCHRONOUS EVENTS

       Default.

STDOUT

       Concatenated lines of input files shall be separated by the  <tab>  (or  other  characters
       under the control of the -d option) and terminated by a <newline>.

STDERR

       The standard error shall be used only for diagnostic messages.

OUTPUT FILES

       None.

EXTENDED DESCRIPTION

       None.

EXIT STATUS

       The following exit values shall be returned:

        0    Successful completion.

       >0    An error occurred.

CONSEQUENCES OF ERRORS

       If  one  or  more  input  files  cannot  be  opened when the -s option is not specified, a
       diagnostic message shall be written to  standard  error,  but  no  output  is  written  to
       standard  output.  If  the  -s  option  is  specified, the paste utility shall provide the
       default behavior described in Section 1.4, Utility Description Defaults.

       The following sections are informative.

APPLICATION USAGE

       When the escape sequences of the list option-argument are used in  a  shell  script,  they
       must be quoted; otherwise, the shell treats the <backslash> as a special character.

       Conforming  applications  should  only  use  the  specific  <backslash>-escaped delimiters
       presented in this volume of POSIX.1‐2017. Historical implementations treat '\x', where 'x'
       is  not  in  this list, as 'x', but future implementations are free to expand this list to
       recognize other common escapes similar to those accepted  by  printf  and  other  standard
       utilities.

       Most  of  the  standard  utilities work on text files. The cut utility can be used to turn
       files with arbitrary line lengths into a set of text files containing the same  data.  The
       paste  utility  can be used to create (or recreate) files with arbitrary line lengths. For
       example, if file contains long lines:

           cut -b 1-500 -n file > file1
           cut -b 501- -n file > file2

       creates file1 (a text file) with lines no longer than 500 bytes (plus the  <newline>)  and
       file2  that  contains  the remainder of the data from file.  Note that file2 is not a text
       file if there are lines in file that are longer than 500 + {LINE_MAX} bytes. The  original
       file can be recreated from file1 and file2 using the command:

           paste -d "\0" file1 file2 > file

       The commands:

           paste -d "\0" ...
           paste -d "" ...

       are not necessarily equivalent; the latter is not specified by this volume of POSIX.1‐2017
       and may result in an error. The construct '\0' is used to mean  ``no  separator''  because
       historical versions of paste did not follow the syntax guidelines, and the command:

           paste -d"" ...

       could not be handled properly by getopt().

EXAMPLES

        1. Write out a directory in four columns:

               ls | paste - - - -

        2. Combine pairs of lines from a file into single lines:

               paste -s -d "\t\n" file

RATIONALE

       None.

FUTURE DIRECTIONS

       None.

SEE ALSO

       Section 1.4, Utility Description Defaults, cut, grep, pr

       The  Base  Definitions  volume  of POSIX.1‐2017, Chapter 7, Locale, Chapter 8, Environment
       Variables, Section 12.2, Utility Syntax Guidelines

COPYRIGHT

       Portions of this text are reprinted and  reproduced  in  electronic  form  from  IEEE  Std
       1003.1-2017,  Standard  for  Information Technology -- Portable Operating System Interface
       (POSIX), The Open Group Base Specifications Issue 7, 2018 Edition, Copyright (C)  2018  by
       the  Institute  of  Electrical  and Electronics Engineers, Inc and The Open Group.  In the
       event of any discrepancy between this version and the original IEEE  and  The  Open  Group
       Standard,  the  original  IEEE  and  The  Open Group Standard is the referee document. The
       original Standard can be obtained online at http://www.opengroup.org/unix/online.html .

       Any typographical or formatting errors that appear in this page are most  likely  to  have
       been  introduced  during  the conversion of the source files to man page format. To report
       such errors, see https://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/reporting_bugs.html .