NAME

       rlam - laminate records from multiple files

SYNOPSIS

       rlam [ -tS ][ -u ][ -iaN | -ifN | -idN | -iiN | -iwN | -ibN ] input1 input2 ..

DESCRIPTION

       Rlam  simply joins records (or lines) from multiple inputs, separating them with the given
       string (TAB by default).  Different  separators  may  be  given  for  different  files  by
       specifying  additional  -t options in between each file name.  Note that there is no space
       between this option and its argument.  If none of the input files uses an ASCII separator,
       then no end-of-line character will be printed, either.

       An input is either a stream or a command.  Commands are given in quotes, and begin with an
       exclamantion point ('!').  If the inputs do not  have  the  same  number  of  lines,  then
       shorter files will stop contributing to the output as they run out.

       The  -ia option may be used to specify ASCII input (the default), or the -if option may be
       used to indicated binary IEEE 32-bit floats on input.  Similarly, the -id and -ii  options
       may  be  used  to  indicate binary 64-bit doubles or integer words, respectively.  The -iw
       option specifies 2-byte short words, and the -ib option specifies bytes.  If a  number  is
       immediately  follows any of these options, then it indicates that multiple such values are
       expected for each record.  For example, -if3 indicates three floats per input  record  for
       the  next  named  input.   In the case of the -ia option, no number indicates one line per
       input record, and numbers greater than zero indicate  that  many  characters  exactly  per
       record.   For  binary  input formts, no number implies one value per record.  For anything
       other than EOL-separated input, the default tab separator is reset to the empty string.

       A hyphen ('-') by itself can be used to  indicate  the  standard  input,  and  may  appear
       multiple  times.   The  -u  option  forces output after each record (i.e., one run through
       inputs).

EXAMPLE

       To join files output1 and output2, separated by a comma:

         rlam -t, output1 output2

       To join a file with line numbers (starting at 0) and its reverse:

         cnt `wc -l < lam.c` | rlam - -t: lam.c -t '!tail -r lam.c'

       To join four data files, each having three doubles per record:

         rlam -id3 file1.dbl file2.dbl file3.dbl file4.dbl > combined.dbl

AUTHOR

       Greg Ward

SEE ALSO

       cnt(1), histo(1), neaten(1), rcalc(1), tabfunc(1), total(1)