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COLUMN(1) General Commands Manual COLUMN(1) NAME col, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, mc, fold, expand - column alignment SYNOPSIS col [ -bfx ] 2 [ file ] mc [ - ] [ -N ] [ -t ] [ file ... ] fold [ -N ] [ file ... ] expand [ -stops ] [ file ... ] DESCRIPTION These programs rearrange files for appearance's sake. All read the standard input and write the standard output. Some optionally read from files instead. Col overlays lines to expunge reverse line feeds (ESC-7) and half line feeds (ESC-9 and ESC-8) as produced by nroff for .2C in ms(6) and for tbl(1). It normally emits only full line feeds; option -f (fine) al- lows half line feeds too. Option -b removes backspaces, printing just one of each pile of overstruck characters. Col normally converts white space to tabs; option -x overrides this feature. Other escaped charac- ters and non-printing characters, except for SO and SI, are ignored. Col should not be used for printing on an HP ThinkJet printer with think (thinkblt(9.1)), which performs the col function itself. Commands 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 convert their input to 2-, 3-, 4-, 5-, or 6-col- umn form, with consecutive input lines arranged across each row. Fold inserts newlines after each N characters (default n=80, or mux(9.1) window size) of long lines. Mc splits the input into as many columns as will fit in N print posi- tions (default N=80). Under option - each input line ending in a colon is printed separately (see example). On output, multiple spaces are converted to tabs; this is suppressed by option -t. Expand replaces tabs by spaces. The optional stops argument is a comma-separated list of tab stops, counted from 0; default is every 8 columns. EXAMPLES tbl file | nroff -ms | col | hp Format some tables for printing on typewriters; use col to re- move reverse line feeds and hp (see ul(1)) to do underlining, etc., on an HP terminal. ls directory1 directory2 | mc - List files in multiple columns, separated by directory. SEE ALSO pr(1) BUGS Col can't back up more than 128 lines or handle more than 800 charac- ters per line, and understands (013) as reverse line feed. COLUMN(1)