PASTE(1)                   POSIX Programmer's Manual                  PASTE(1)



PROLOG
       This manual page is part of the POSIX Programmer's Manual.  The OS
       implementation of this interface may differ (consult the corresponding
       OS manual page for details of OS behavior), or the interface may not be
       implemented on OS.

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
       POSIX.1-2017, 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 <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> characters 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 ''\\00'' 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
                       POSIX.1-2017, Chapter _7, Locale), the results are
                       unspecified.

                 If any other characters follow the <backslash>, the results
                 are unspecified.

       -s        Concatenate all of the lines from each input file into one
                 line of output per file, in command line order. The <newline>
                 of every line except the last line in each input file shall
                 be replaced with a <tab>, unless otherwise specified by the
                 -d option. If an input file is empty, the output line
                 corresponding to that file shall consist of only a <newline>
                 character.

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 POSIX.1-2017, Section 8.2, Internationalization
                 Variables 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
       Section 1.4, 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
       <backslash> as a special character.

       Conforming applications should only use the specific
       <backslash>-escaped delimiters presented in this volume of
       POSIX.1-2017. 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 POSIX.1-2017 and may result in an error. The construct ''\\00''
       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
       Section 1.4, Utility Description Defaults, cut, grep, pr

       The Base Definitions volume of POSIX.1-2017, Chapter _7, Locale, Chapter
       _8, Environment Variables, Section 12.2, Utility Syntax Guidelines

COPYRIGHT
       Portions of this text are reprinted and reproduced in electronic form
       from IEEE Std 1003.1-2017, Standard for Information Technology --
       Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX), The Open Group Base
       Specifications Issue 7, 2018 Edition, Copyright (C) 2018 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 .

       Any typographical or formatting errors that appear in this page are
       most likely to have been introduced during the conversion of the source
       files to man page format. To report such errors, see
       https://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/reporting_bugs.html .



IEEE/The Open Group                  2017                             PASTE(1)
