Man page 1 : column

column - columnate lists

[-ntx] [-c columns ] [-s sep ] .Op Ar

The 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:

-tag -width indent
-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.
-n By default, the column command will merge multiple adjacent delimiters into a single delimiter when using the - -t option; this option disables that behavior. This option is a Debian GNU/Linux extension.

The COLUMNS , LANG , LC_ALL and LC_CTYPE environment variables affect the execution of as described in environ(7) .

.Ex -std

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

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

The command appeared in

x 4.3 Reno .

Input lines are limited to .Dv LINE_MAX (2048) bytes in length.