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PASTE(1) General Commands Manual PASTE(1) NAME paste -- merge corresponding or subsequent lines of files SYNOPSIS paste [-s] [-d list] file ... DESCRIPTION The paste utility concatenates the corresponding lines of the given in- put files, replacing all but the last file's newline characters with a single tab character, and writes the resulting lines to standard out- put. 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: -d list Use one or more of the provided characters to replace the newline characters instead of the default tab. The charac- ters in list are used circularly, i.e., when list is ex- hausted the first character from list is reused. This con- tinues until a line from the last input file (in default operation) or the last line in each file (using the -s op- tion) is displayed, at which time paste begins 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 -d op- tion. 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' myfile Number the lines in a file, similar to nl(1): sed = myfile | paste - - 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 cut(1), lam(1) STANDARDS The paste utility is expected to be IEEE Std 1003.2 ("POSIX.2") compat- ible. HISTORY A paste command first appeared in AT&T System III UNIX and has been available since 4.3BSD-Reno. AUTHORS The original Bell Labs version was written by Gottfried W. R. Luderer and the BSD version by Adam S. Moskowitz and Marciano Pitargue. FreeBSD 14.3 November 6, 2022 PASTE(1)
NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | EXIT STATUS | EXAMPLES | SEE ALSO | STANDARDS | HISTORY | AUTHORS
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