March 9, 2008

### NAME

column - columnate lists

### SYNOPSIS

column [-tx] [-c columns] [-s sep] []

### DESCRIPTION

The column utility formats its input into multiple columns. Rows are filled before columns. Input is taken from file operands, or, by default, from the standard input. Empty lines are ignored.

The options are as follows:

-c
  Output is formatted for a display columns wide.

-s
  Specify a set of characters to be used to delimit columns for the -t option.

-t
  Determine the number of columns the input contains and create a table. Columns are delimited with whitespace, by default, or with the characters supplied using the -s option. Useful for pretty-printing displays.

-x
  Fill columns before filling rows.

column exits 0 on success, >0 if an error occurred.

### ENVIRONMENT

```COLUMNS`
  The environment variable ```COLUMNS` is used to determine the size of the screen if no other information is available.

### EXAMPLES

```(echo``"PERM` `LINKS` `OWNER` `GROUP` `SIZE` `MONTH` `DAY` `HH:MM/YEAR` `NAME"; \`
```ls``-l``|``sed` `1d)``|``column``-t`

### SEE ALSO

colrm(1), ls(1), paste(1), sort(1)

### HISTORY

The column command appeared in 4.3BSDReno.