PROLOG | NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | OPTIONS | OPERANDS | STDIN | INPUT FILES | ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES | ASYNCHRONOUS EVENTS | STDOUT | STDERR | OUTPUT FILES | EXTENDED DESCRIPTION | EXIT STATUS | CONSEQUENCES OF ERRORS | APPLICATION USAGE | EXAMPLES | RATIONALE | FUTURE DIRECTIONS | SEE ALSO | COPYRIGHT

PASTE(1P)                 POSIX Programmer's Manual                PASTE(1P)

PROLOG         top

       This manual page is part of the POSIX Programmer's Manual.  The Linux
       implementation of this interface may differ (consult the
       corresponding Linux manual page for details of Linux behavior), or
       the interface may not be implemented on Linux.

NAME         top

       paste — merge corresponding or subsequent lines of files

SYNOPSIS         top

       paste [−s] [−d list] file...

DESCRIPTION         top

       The paste utility shall concatenate the corresponding lines of the
       given input files, and write the resulting lines to standard output.
       The default operation of paste shall concatenate the corresponding
       lines of the input files. The <newline> of every line except the line
       from the last input file shall be replaced with a <tab>.
       If an end-of-file condition is detected on one or more input files,
       but not all input files, paste shall behave as though empty lines
       were read from the files on which end-of-file was detected, unless
       the −s option is specified.

OPTIONS         top

       The paste utility shall conform to the Base Definitions volume of
       POSIX.1‐2008, Section 12.2, Utility Syntax Guidelines.
       The following options shall be supported:
       −d list   Unless a <backslash> character appears in list, each
                 character in list is an element specifying a delimiter
                 character. If a <backslash> character appears in list, the
                 <backslash> character and one or more characters following
                 it are an element specifying a delimiter character as
                 described below. These elements specify one or more
                 delimiters to use, instead of the default <tab>, to replace
                 the <newline> of the input lines. The elements in list
                 shall be used circularly; that is, when the list is
                 exhausted the first element from the list is reused. When
                 the −s option is specified:
                  *  The last <newline> in a file shall not be modified.
                  *  The delimiter shall be reset to the first element of
                     list after each file operand is processed.
                 When the −s option is not specified:
                  *  The <newline> characters in the file specified by the
                     last file operand shall not be modified.
                  *  The delimiter shall be reset to the first element of
                     list each time a line is processed from each file.
                 If a <backslash> character appears in list, it and the
                 character following it shall be used to represent the
                 following delimiter characters:
                 \n    <newline>.
                 \t    <tab>.
                 \\    <backslash> character.
                 \0    Empty string (not a null character). If '\0' is
                       immediately followed by the character 'x', the
                       character 'X', or any character defined by the
                       LC_CTYPE digit keyword (see the Base Definitions
                       volume of POSIX.1‐2008, Chapter 7, Locale), the
                       results are unspecified.
                 If any other characters follow the <backslash>, the results
                 are unspecified.
       −s        Concatenate all of the lines of each separate input file in
                 command line order. The <newline> of every line except the
                 last line in each input file shall be replaced with the
                 <tab>, unless otherwise specified by the −d option.

OPERANDS         top

       The following operand shall be supported:
       file      A pathname of an input file. If '−' is specified for one or
                 more of the files, the standard input shall be used; the
                 standard input shall be read one line at a time,
                 circularly, for each instance of '−'.  Implementations
                 shall support pasting of at least 12 file operands.

STDIN         top

       The standard input shall be used only if one or more file operands is
       '−'.  See the INPUT FILES section.

INPUT FILES         top

       The input files shall be text files, except that line lengths shall
       be unlimited.

ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES         top

       The following environment variables shall affect the execution of
       paste:
       LANG      Provide a default value for the internationalization
                 variables that are unset or null. (See the Base Definitions
                 volume of POSIX.1‐2008, Section 8.2, Internationalization
                 Variables the precedence of internationalization variables
                 used to determine the values of locale categories.)
       LC_ALL    If set to a non-empty string value, override the values of
                 all the other internationalization variables.
       LC_CTYPE  Determine the locale for the interpretation of sequences of
                 bytes of text data as characters (for example, single-byte
                 as opposed to multi-byte characters in arguments and input
                 files).
       LC_MESSAGES
                 Determine the locale that should be used to affect the
                 format and contents of diagnostic messages written to
                 standard error.
       NLSPATH   Determine the location of message catalogs for the
                 processing of LC_MESSAGES.

ASYNCHRONOUS EVENTS         top

       Default.

STDOUT         top

       Concatenated lines of input files shall be separated by the <tab> (or
       other characters under the control of the −d option) and terminated
       by a <newline>.

STDERR         top

       The standard error shall be used only for diagnostic messages.

OUTPUT FILES         top

       None.

EXTENDED DESCRIPTION         top

       None.

EXIT STATUS         top

       The following exit values shall be returned:
        0    Successful completion.
       >0    An error occurred.

CONSEQUENCES OF ERRORS         top

       If one or more input files cannot be opened when the −s option is not
       specified, a diagnostic message shall be written to standard error,
       but no output is written to standard output. If the −s option is
       specified, the paste utility shall provide the default behavior
       described in Section 1.4, Utility Description Defaults.
       The following sections are informative.

APPLICATION USAGE         top

       When the escape sequences of the list option-argument are used in a
       shell script, they must be quoted; otherwise, the shell treats the
       <backslash> as a special character.
       Conforming applications should only use the specific
       <backslash>-escaped delimiters presented in this volume of
       POSIX.1‐2008. Historical implementations treat '\x', where 'x' is not
       in this list, as 'x', but future implementations are free to expand
       this list to recognize other common escapes similar to those accepted
       by printf and other standard utilities.
       Most of the standard utilities work on text files. The cut utility
       can be used to turn files with arbitrary line lengths into a set of
       text files containing the same data. The paste utility can be used to
       create (or recreate) files with arbitrary line lengths. For example,
       if file contains long lines:
           cut −b 1−500 −n file > file1
           cut −b 501− −n file > file2
       creates file1 (a text file) with lines no longer than 500 bytes (plus
       the <newline>) and file2 that contains the remainder of the data from
       file.  Note that file2 is not a text file if there are lines in file
       that are longer than 500 + {LINE_MAX} bytes. The original file can be
       recreated from file1 and file2 using the command:
           paste −d "\0" file1 file2 > file
       The commands:
           paste −d "\0" ...
           paste −d "" ...
       are not necessarily equivalent; the latter is not specified by this
       volume of POSIX.1‐2008 and may result in an error. The construct '\0'
       is used to mean ``no separator'' because historical versions of paste
       did not follow the syntax guidelines, and the command:
           paste −d"" ...
       could not be handled properly by getopt().

EXAMPLES         top

        1. Write out a directory in four columns:
               ls | paste − − − −
        2. Combine pairs of lines from a file into single lines:
               paste −s −d "\t\n" file

RATIONALE         top

       None.

FUTURE DIRECTIONS         top

       None.

SEE ALSO         top

       Section 1.4, Utility Description Defaults, cut(1p), grep(1p), pr(1p)
       The Base Definitions volume of POSIX.1‐2008, Chapter 7, Locale,
       Chapter 8, Environment Variables, Section 12.2, Utility Syntax
       Guidelines

COPYRIGHT         top

       Portions of this text are reprinted and reproduced in electronic form
       from IEEE Std 1003.1, 2013 Edition, Standard for Information
       Technology -- Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX), The Open
       Group Base Specifications Issue 7, Copyright (C) 2013 by the
       Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc and The Open
       Group.  (This is POSIX.1-2008 with the 2013 Technical Corrigendum 1
       applied.) In the event of any discrepancy between this version and
       the original IEEE and The Open Group Standard, the original IEEE and
       The Open Group Standard is the referee document. The original
       Standard can be obtained online at http://www.unix.org/online.html .
       Any typographical or formatting errors that appear in this page are
       most likely to have been introduced during the conversion of the
       source files to man page format. To report such errors, see
       https://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/reporting_bugs.html .
IEEE/The Open Group                 2013                           PASTE(1P)

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