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)