COLUMN(1)               FreeBSD General Commands Manual              COLUMN(1)

NAME

     column - columnate lists

SYNOPSIS

     column [-tx] [-c columns] [-l tblcols] [-s sep] [file ...]

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.

     -l      When used with -t, limit the table to tblcols columns in width.
             The last column will contain the rest of the line, including any
             delimiters.

     -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.

ENVIRONMENT

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

EXIT STATUS

     The column utility exits 0 on success, and >0 if an error occurs.

EXAMPLES

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

SEE ALSO

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

HISTORY

     The column command appeared in 4.3BSD-Reno.

BUGS

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

FreeBSD 15.1-STABLE-HBSD         May 13, 2025                        COLUMN(1)