column
(1)columnate lists
Options
26-J--jsonUse JSON output format to print the table. The option --table-columns is required and the option --table-name is recommended.
-c--output-widthwidthOutput is formatted to a width specified as a 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. The default is the terminal width and 80 columns in non-interactive mode. The column headers are never truncated. The placeholder "unlimited" (or 0) can be used to prevent restricting output width. This is recommended for example when redirecting output to a file.
-d--table-noheadingsOmit printing the header. This option allows the use of user supplied column names on the command line, but keeps the header hidden when printing the table.
-o--output-separatorstringColumn delimiter for table output (default is two spaces).
-s--separatorseparatorsPossible input item delimiters (default is whitespace).
-S--use-spacesnumberWhen not in table mode, use whitespaces instead of tabulators to align the columns. This option specifies the minimum number of whitespaces that separate two columns.
-t--tableDetermine the number of columns the input contains and create a table. Columns are by default delimited with whitespace, or with characters supplied using the --output-separator option. Table output is useful for pretty-printing.
-C--table-columnattributesDefine a column with a comma separated list of column attributes. This option can be used more than once, every use defines a single column. Attributes replace some of --table- options. For example, --table-column name=FOO,right defines a column where text is aligned to right. The option is mutually exclusive to --table-columns. Supported attributes are: name=string Column name. trunc Truncate column text when necessary. The same as --table-truncate. right Right align text. The same as --table-right. width=number Column width. It’s used only as a hint. To force it, specify the strictwidth attr
-N--table-columnsnamesSpecify column names with a comma separated list. The names are used for the table header and column addressing in option arguments. See also --table-column.
-l--table-columns-limitnumberSpecify maximum number of 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-rightcolumnsRight align text in specified columns.
-T--table-truncatecolumnsSpecify columns where text can be truncated when necessary, otherwise very long table entries may be printed on multiple lines.
-E--table-noextremecolumnsSpecify 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-repeatPrint header line for each page.
-W--table-wrapcolumnsSpecify columns where multi-line cells can be used for long text.
-H--table-hidecolumnsDon’t print specified columns. The special placeholder '-' may be used to hide all unnamed columns (see --table-columns).
-O--table-ordercolumnsSpecify the output column order.
-n--table-namenameSpecify the table name used for JSON output. The default is "table".
-m--table-maxoutFill all available space on output.
-L--keep-empty-linesPreserve whitespace-only lines in the input. The default is to ignore all empty lines. This option’s original name was --table-empty-lines, but has since been deprecated because it gives the false impression that the option only applies to table mode.
-r--treecolumnSpecify the column to use for a tree-like output. Note that the circular dependencies and other anomalies in child and parent relation are silently ignored.
-i--tree-idcolumnSpecify the column that contains each line’s unique child IDs for a child-parent relation.
-p--tree-parentcolumnSpecify the column that contains each line’s parent IDs for a child-parent relation.
-x--fillrowsFill rows before filling columns.
-h--helpDisplay help text and exit.
-V--versionDisplay version and exit.
DESCRIPTION
The column utility formats its input into multiple columns. It supports three modes:
fill columns before rows
fill rows before columns
create a table
Input is taken from file, or otherwise from standard input. Empty lines are ignored and all invalid multibyte sequences are encoded with the x<hex> convention.
ENVIRONMENT
HISTORY
BUGS
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.
EXAMPLES
Print fstab with a header line and align numbers to the right:
sed 's/#.*//' /etc/fstab | column --table --table-columns SOURCE,TARGET,TYPE,OPTIONS,FREQ,PASS --table-right FREQ,PASS
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
REPORTING BUGS
For bug reports, use the issue tracker https://github.com/util-linux/util-linux/issues.
AVAILABILITY
The column command is part of the util-linux package which can be downloaded from Linux Kernel Archive https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux/.