term% cat index.txt COLUMN(1) General Commands Manual COLUMN(1)
NAME
col, 2-6, mc, fold, expand - column alignment
SYNOPSIS
col [ -bfx ]
2 [ file ]
ind [ prefix ]
fold [ -N ] [ file ] ...
mc [ - ] [ -N ] [ -t ] [ file ] ...
expand [ -stops ] [ file ] ...
DESCRIPTION
These programs rearrange files for appearance's sake. All read the
standard input and write the standard output. Some optionally read
from files instead.
Col overlays lines to expunge reverse line feeds (ESC-7) and half line
feeds (ESC-9 and ESC-8) as produced by nroff for .2C in ms(7) and for
tbl(1). It normally emits only full line feeds; option -f (fine) al‐
lows half line feeds too. Option -b removes backspaces, printing just
one of each pile of overstruck characters. Col normally converts white
space to tabs; option -x overrides this feature. Other escaped charac‐
ters and non-printing characters, except for SO and SI, are ignored.
Col should not be used for printing on an HP ThinkJet printer with
think(9.1), which performs the col function itself.
Commands 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 convert their input to 2-, 3-, 4-, 5-, or 6-col‐
umn form.
Mc prints in as many columns as will fit on N-column `paper' (default
n=80). If an input line ends in a colon `:', a `break' occurs; thus
`ls directory1 directory2 | mc' lists each directory separately. This
feature is suppressed if option - is present, or if input is from a
file. On output, multiple spaces are converted to tabs; this is sup‐
pressed by option -t.
Expand replaces tabs by spaces. The optional stops argument is a
comma-separated of tab stop postions, counted from 0; default is every
8 columns.
Fold inserts newlines after each N characters (default n=80) of long
lines.
EXAMPLE
tbl file ⎪ nroff -ms ⎪ col ⎪ hp
FILES
/etc/termcap
SEE ALSO
pr(1)
BUGS
Col can't back up more than 128 lines or handle more than 800 charac‐
ters per line, and understands VT (013) as reverse line feed.
COLUMN(1)