column - columnate lists
column [options] file...
The column utility formats its input into multiple columns. Rows are filled before columns. Input is taken from file or, by default, from standard input. Empty lines are ignored.
−c, −−columns width
Output is formatted to a width specified as number of characters.
−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 separator. Table output is useful for pretty-printing.
−s, −−separator separators
Specify possible table delimiters (default is whitespace).
−o, −−output-separator separators
Specify table output delimiter (default is two whitespaces).
−x, −−fillrows
Fill columns before filling rows.
−h, −−help
Print help and exit.
The environment variable COLUMNS is used to determine the size of the screen if no other information is available.
sed ’s/#.*//’ /etc/fstab | column -t
The util-linux version 2.23 changed −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
colrm(1), ls(1), paste(1), sort(1)
The column command appeared in 4.3BSD-Reno.
The column command is part of the util-linux package and is available from ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux/.