PASTE(1P) POSIX Programmer's Manual PASTE(1P)PROLOG
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NAMEpaste - merge corresponding or subsequent lines of files
SYNOPSISpaste [-s][-d list] file...
DESCRIPTION
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
The paste utility shall conform to the Base Definitions volume of
IEEE Std 1003.1-2001, 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 back‐
slash 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>s 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 follow‐
ing 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 fol‐
lowed by the character 'x', the character 'X', or any character
defined by the LC_CTYPE digit keyword (see the Base Definitions
volume of IEEE Std 1003.1-2001, Chapter 7, Locale), the results
are unspecified.
If any other characters follow the backslash, the results are unspeci‐
fied.
-s Concatenate all of the lines of each separate input file in com‐
mand 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
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
The standard input shall be used only if one or more file operands is
'-' . See the INPUT FILES section.
INPUT FILES
The input files shall be text files, except that line lengths shall be
unlimited.
ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
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
IEEE Std 1003.1-2001, Section 8.2, Internationalization Vari‐
ables for 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
Default.
STDOUT
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
The standard error shall be used only for diagnostic messages.
OUTPUT FILES
None.
EXTENDED DESCRIPTION
None.
EXIT STATUS
The following exit values shall be returned:
0 Successful completion.
>0 An error occurred.
CONSEQUENCES OF ERRORS
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 Util‐
ity Description Defaults .
The following sections are informative.
APPLICATION USAGE
When the escape sequences of the list option-argument are used in a
shell script, they must be quoted; otherwise, the shell treats the '\'
as a special character.
Conforming applications should only use the specific backslash escaped
delimiters presented in this volume of IEEE Std 1003.1-2001. 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 IEEE Std 1003.1-2001 and may result in an error. The con‐
struct '\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
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
None.
FUTURE DIRECTIONS
None.
SEE ALSO
Utility Description Defaults, cut, grep, pr
COPYRIGHT
Portions of this text are reprinted and reproduced in electronic form
from IEEE Std 1003.1, 2003 Edition, Standard for Information Technology
-- Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX), The Open Group Base
Specifications Issue 6, Copyright (C) 2001-2003 by the Institute of
Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc and The Open Group. 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.opengroup.org/unix/online.html .
IEEE/The Open Group 2003 PASTE(1P)
