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PASTE(1P) POSIX Programmer's Manual PASTE(1P)
PROLOG
This manual page is part of the POSIX Programmer's Manual. The Linux implementation of this interface may differ (con-
sult the corresponding Linux manual page for details of Linux behavior), or the interface may not be implemented on
Linux.
NAME
paste - merge corresponding or subsequent lines of files
SYNOPSIS
paste [-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 charac-
ter. If a backslash 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 following 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 followed 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 unspecified.
-s Concatenate all of the lines of each separate input file in command 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 Variables for the precedence of international-
ization 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 stan-
dard 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 pro-
vide the default behavior described in Utility 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 implemen-
tations 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 arbi-
trary 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 remain-
der 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 construct '\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, Copy-
right (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.open-
group.org/unix/online.html .
IEEE/The Open Group 2003 PASTE(1P)
