Coding School

Problem

Ever wanted to produce columns of output, rather than your output spilling off the screen.

Solution

Useful command for this is paste, see example for how it works – to split output into 3 columns.

Example

ls | paste - - -
comments.php comments-popup.php fat.js
footer.php header.php index.php
screenshot.png sidebar.php style.css
As you'd expect with UNIX, that is not the end of this commands uses!

Create a comma seperated list:

ls | paste - - - -d,
comments.php,comments-popup.php,fat.js
footer.php,header.php,index.php
screenshot.png,sidebar.php,style.css

Then courtesy of the LINUX info command:


cat num2
1
2
$ cat let3
a
b
c
$ paste num2 let3
1 a
2 b
c


And:


$ paste -s num2 let3
1 2
a b c


Reference

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• Linux Man Pages – paste command
• Linux Man Pages – ls command