PASTE(1)

NAME

paste — merge lines

SYNOPSIS

paste [-z] [-d elimiters] [file]…

paste -s [-z] [-d elimiters] [file]…

DESCRIPTION

Without -s, concatenates consecutive lines of files (standard input stream if "-", the default), separating them with tabs, until all are exhausted; otherwise concatenates each file in turn.

OPTIONS

-s, --serial

Concatenate the entirety of each file in turn.

-z, --zero-terminated

Input and output lines are terminated by NULs, not newlines.

-d, --delimiters=list

A list of delimiters to use instead of the tab, used circularly for each output line.

Each character corresponds to itself as a delimiter, except the following escapes are recognised:

\b, \t, \n, \v, \f, \r: The backspace, tab, line feed, vertical tab, form feed, and carriage return characters, respectively.
\\: Backslash.
\0: The empty string.
\anything: anything

Defaults to "\t". Empty list is equivalent to "\0". Characters is parsed according to the current locale; invalid multi-byte sequences are ignored.

EXIT STATUS

1 if a file couldn't be opened.

EXAMPLES

List directory in four columns:

$ ls | paste - - - -
a       a.c     a.cpp   a.out
fips151-1.pdf   paste   paste.1 paste.cpp
paste.o paste.ps

Combine pairs of lines:

$ seq 10 | paste -sd '\t\n' -
1       2
3       4
5       6
7       8
9       10

STANDARDS

Conforms to IEEE Std 1003.1-2008 (“POSIX.1”). -z, allowing no files, -d escapes other than \n, \t, \0, and \\, and empty delimiters are extensions, also present on the GNU system.

HISTORY

Appeared, fully formed, as paste(1):

paste - merge same lines of several files or subsequent lines of a file

in CB-UNIX, later part of AT&T System III UNIX, written by Gottfried W. R. Luderer, in-or-before November of 1978. The implementation notes:

/* paste: concatenate corresponding lines of each file in parallel(GWRL) */
/*      (-s option: serial concatenation like old (127's) paste command */

but no evidence of a paste from 127 (AT&T's Computer Science Research division) exists in earlier systems.

It was standardised verbatim in IEEE Std 1003.2-1992 (“POSIX.2”), and appears in 4.3BSD-Reno.