James's Ramblings

column

Created: August 31, 2020
  • Takes tabular data and outputs a table.
  • Looks for whitespace to delimit columns by default.
  • Basic usage: column -t FILE; will read from STDOUT when FILE is not specified.

Key Flags

Description Command
Determine the number of columns the input contains and create a table. -t
Specify a delimiter other than whitespace. -s DELIMITER

Other Flags

Description Command
Output is formatted for a display columns wide. -c
Fill columns before filling rows. -x
Disable merging adjacent delimiter characters. This option is a Debian extension. -n
Do not ignore empty lines. e