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col(1) General Commands Manual col(1) NAME col - Filters text containing linefeeds SYNOPSIS col [-bfhpx] [-l number] The col command reads from standard input and writes to standard out- put. STANDARDS Interfaces documented on this reference page conform to industry stan- dards as follows: col: XPG4, XPG4-UNIX Refer to the standards(5) reference page for more information about in- dustry standards and associated tags. OPTIONS Assumes that the output device in use is not capable of backspacing. In this case, if two or more characters are to be displayed in the same position, only the last one that is read is displayed in the output. This function is useful for converting nroff output to produce readable results on terminals or printers that do not support underlining or overstriking characters. Suppresses the default treatment of half-line motions in the input. Normally, col does not emit half-line motions on output, although it does accept them in its input. With this option, output may contain forward half-linefeeds (<ESC-9>), but not reverse linefeeds (<ESC-7> or <ESC-8>). [DIGITAL] Compresses spaces into tabs. This is the default. [DIGITAL] Buffers at least number lines in memory. By default, 128 lines are buffered. Displays unknown escape sequences as characters, subject to overprinting from reverse line mo- tions. Normally, col ignores them. You should be fully aware of the textual position of escape sequences before you use this option. Out- puts multiple spaces instead of tabs. OPERANDS None DESCRIPTION The col command performs the line overlays implied by reverse linefeeds (ASCII <ESC-7>), and by forward and reverse half-linefeeds (ASCII <ESC-9> and ASCII <ESC-8>). It also replaces white-space characters with tabs where possible. [DIGITAL] The col command is particularly useful for filtering multi- column output made by the nroff and tbl commands. The col command assumes that the ASCII control characters SO (\017) and SI (\016) begin and end text in an alternate character set. The col command remembers the character set each input character belongs to, and on output generates SI and SO characters as appropriate to ensure that each character is printed in the correct character set. On input, the col command accepts only the control characters for the <Space>, <Backspace>, <Tab>, and <Return> keys; the newline character; the SI, SO, and VT control characters; and <ESC-7>, <ESC-8>, or <ESC-9>. The VT control character (\013) is an alternate form of full reverse linefeed included for compatibility with some earlier programs of this type. The col command discards all other nonprinting charac- ters. [DIGITAL] If the input attempts to back up to the last flushed line, col displays a warning message. NOTES Depending on the printer, using the -x option may increase printing time. Local vertical motion that causes a backwards move over the first line of input is ignored. The first line of input may not have any superscripts. This command is marked for possible future with- drawal from the XPG4-UNIX standard. It may be replaced by features de- signed for greater internationalization features. EXIT STATUS The following exit values are returned: Successful completion. An er- ror occurred. ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES The following environment variables affect the execution of col: Pro- vides a default value for the internationalization variables that are unset or null. If LANG is unset or null, the corresponding value from the default locale is used. If any of the internationalization vari- ables contain an invalid setting, the utility behaves as if none of the variables had been defined. If set to a non-empty string value, over- rides the values of all the other internationalization variables. De- termines 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). Determines the locale for the format and contents of diagnostic messages written to standard error. Deter- mines the location of message catalogues for the processing of LC_MES- SAGES. SEE ALSO Commands: deroff(1), neqn(1), nroff(1), tbl(1) Standards: standards(5) col(1)