paste(1) — sys5 — Apollo Domain/IX SR9.5



PASTE(1)                 DOMAIN/IX SYS5                  PASTE(1)



NAME
     paste - merge same lines of several files or subsequent
     lines of one file

USAGE
     paste [-ds] [list] file1 file2 ...

DESCRIPTION
     If you specify no options, or simply the -d option, paste
     concatenates corresponding lines of the given input files (
     file1, file2, etc. ).  It treats each file as one or more
     columns of a table and pastes them together horizontally
     (also known as  parallel merging).  You may specify a dash
     (-) in place of a filename, causing paste to read from the
     standard input (note that there is no prompting for this).

     Paste is the counterpart of cat(1), which concatenates vert-
     ically (i.e., one file after the other).

     If you specify the -s option, paste replaces the function of
     an older command with the same name by combining subsequent
     lines of the input file (also known as serial merging).  In
     all cases, lines are glued together with the tab character,
     or with characters from an optionally specified list.  Out-
     put is to the standard output, so it can be used as the
     start of a pipe, or as a filter, if a dash is used in place
     of a filename.

OPTIONS
     -d        Do not replace the newline characters of each but
               the last file (or last line) by a tab character.
               Allow replacement of the tab character by one or
               more alternate characters (see below).

     list      Replace the default tab as the line concatenation
               character with the one or more characters immedi-
               ately following -d. When the list is exhausted, it
               is reused.  In parallel merging (i.e., no -s
               option), the lines from the last file are always
               terminated with a newline character, not from the
               list.  The list may contain these special escape
               sequences: \n (newline), \t (tab), \(backslash),
               and \0 (empty string, not a null character).  Quo-
               tation marks may be necessary, if characters have
               special meaning to the Shell (e.g., to get one
               backslash, use -d``\'').

     -s        Merge subsequent lines rather than one from each
               input file.  Use tab for concatenation, unless a
               list is specified with the -d option.  Regardless



Printed 12/4/86                                           PASTE-1



PASTE(1)                 DOMAIN/IX SYS5                  PASTE(1)



               of the list, the very last character of the file
               is forced to be a newline.

EXAMPLES
     To list the current directory in three columns, use the fol-
     lowing command:

          ls | paste - - -


     To combine pairs of lines into lines in file, use this com-
     mand:

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

DIAGNOSTICS
     ``line too long''   Output lines are restricted to 511 char-
                         acters.

     ``too many files''  Except for the -s option, no more than
                         12 input files may be specified.

RELATED INFORMATION
     cut(1), grep(1), pr(1).





























PASTE-2                                           Printed 12/4/86

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