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NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | OPTIONS | ENVIRONMENT | HISTORY | BUGS | EXAMPLES | SEE ALSO | AVAILABILITY | COLOPHON |
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COLUMN(1) User Commands COLUMN(1)
column - columnate lists
column [options] [file...]
The column utility formats its input into multiple columns. The
util support three modes:
columns are filled before rows
This is the default mode (required by backward
compatibility).
rows are filled before columns
This mode is enabled by option -x, --fillrows
table Determine the number of columns the input contains and
create a table. This mode is enabled by option -t,
--table and columns formatting is possible to modify by
--table-* options. Use this mode if not sure.
Input is taken from file, or otherwise from standard input.
Empty lines are ignored and all invalid multibyte sequences are
encoded by \x<hex> convention.
The argument columns for --table-* options is comma separated
list of the column names as defined by --table-columns or it's
column number in order as specified by input. It's possible to
mix names and numbers.
-J, --json
Use JSON output format to print the table, the option
--table-columns is required and the option --table-name is
recommended.
-c, --output-width width
Output is formatted to a width specified as number of
characters. The original name of this option is --columns;
this name is deprecated since v2.30. Note that input
longer than width is not truncated by default.
-d, --table-noheadings
Do not print header. This option allows the use of
logical column names on the command line, but keeps the
header hidden when printing the table.
-o, --output-separator string
Specify the columns delimiter for table output (default is
two spaces).
-s, --separator separators
Specify the possible input item delimiters (default is
whitespace).
-t, --table
Determine the number of columns the input contains and
create a table. Columns are delimited with whitespace, by
default, or with the characters supplied using the
--output-separator option. Table output is useful for
pretty-printing.
-N, --table-columns names
Specify the columns names by comma separated list of
names. The names are used for the table header or to
address column in option arguments.
-l, --table-columns-limit number
Specify maximal number of the input columns. The last
column will contain all remaining line data if the limit
is smaller than the number of the columns in the input
data.
-R, --table-right columns
Right align text in the specified columns.
-T, --table-truncate columns
Specify columns where text can be truncated when
necessary, otherwise very long table entries may be
printed on multiple lines.
-E, --table-noextreme columns
Specify columns where is possible to ignore unusually long
(longer than average) cells when calculate column width.
The option has impact to the width calculation and table
formatting, but the printed text is not affected.
The option is used for the last visible column by default.
-e, --table-header-repeat
Print header line for each page.
-W, --table-wrap columns
Specify columns where is possible to use multi-line cell
for long text when necessary.
-H, --table-hide columns
Don't print specified columns. The special placeholder '-'
may be used to hide all unnamed columns (see --table-
columns).
-O, --table-order columns
Specify columns order on output.
-n, --table-name name
Specify the table name used for JSON output. The default
is "table".
-L, --keep-empty-lines
Preserve whitespace-only lines in the input. The default
is ignore empty lines at all. This option’s original name
was --table-empty-lines but is now deprecated because it
gives the false impression that the option only applies to
table mode.
-r, --tree column
Specify column to use tree-like output. Note that the
circular dependencies and other anomalies in child and
parent relation are silently ignored.
-i, --tree-id column
Specify column with line ID to create child-parent
relation.
-p, --tree-parent column
Specify column with parent ID to create child-parent
relation.
-x, --fillrows
Fill rows before filling columns.
-V, --version
Display version information and exit.
-h, --help
Display help text and exit.
The environment variable COLUMNS is used to determine the size of
the screen if no other information is available.
The column command appeared in 4.3BSD-Reno.
Version 2.23 changed the -s option to be non-greedy, for example:
printf "a:b:c\n1::3\n" | column -t -s ':'
Old output:
a b c
1 3
New output (since util-linux 2.23):
a b c
1 3
Historical versions of this tool indicated that "rows are filled
before columns" by default, and that the -x option reverses this.
This wording did not reflect the actual behavior, and it has
since been corrected (see above). Other implementations of column
may continue to use the older documentation, but the behavior
should be identical in any case.
Print fstab with header line and align number to the right:
sed 's/#.*//' /etc/fstab | column --table --table-columns SOURCE,TARGET,TYPE,OPTIONS,PASS,FREQ --table-right PASS,FREQ
Print fstab and hide unnamed columns:
sed 's/#.*//' /etc/fstab | column --table --table-columns SOURCE,TARGET,TYPE --table-hide -
Print a tree:
echo -e '1 0 A\n2 1 AA\n3 1 AB\n4 2 AAA\n5 2 AAB' | column --tree-id 1 --tree-parent 2 --tree 3
1 0 A
2 1 |-AA
4 2 | |-AAA
5 2 | `-AAB
3 1 `-AB
colrm(1), ls(1), paste(1), sort(1)
The column command is part of the util-linux package and is
available from
https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux/.
This page is part of the util-linux (a random collection of Linux
utilities) project. Information about the project can be found
at ⟨https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux/⟩. If you
have a bug report for this manual page, send it to
util-linux@vger.kernel.org. This page was obtained from the
project's upstream Git repository
⟨git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/utils/util-linux/util-linux.git⟩ on
2020-12-18. (At that time, the date of the most recent commit
that was found in the repository was 2020-12-17.) If you
discover any rendering problems in this HTML version of the page,
or you believe there is a better or more up-to-date source for
the page, or you have corrections or improvements to the
information in this COLOPHON (which is not part of the original
manual page), send a mail to man-pages@man7.org
util-linux February 2019 COLUMN(1)
Pages that refer to this page: colrm(1)
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