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HTML rendering created 2025-09-06 by Michael Kerrisk, author of The Linux Programming Interface. For details of in-depth Linux/UNIX system programming training courses that I teach, look here. Hosting by jambit GmbH. |
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NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | OPTIONS | COLORS | ENVIRONMENT | HISTORY | BUGS | EXAMPLES | SEE ALSO | REPORTING BUGS | AVAILABILITY |
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COLUMN(1) User Commands COLUMN(1)
column - columnate lists
column [options] [file ...]
The column utility formats its input into multiple columns. It
supports three modes:
fill columns before rows
This is the default mode (required for backwards
compatibility).
fill rows before columns
This mode is enabled with the -x, --fillrows option.
create a table
Determine the number of columns the input contains and create
a table. This mode is enabled with the -t/--table option.
Output is aligned to the terminal width in interactive mode,
and to 80 columns in non-interactive mode (see --output-width
for more details). Custom formatting can be applied by using
various --table-* options.
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.
The argument columns, for the --table-* options below, is a
comma-separated list of user-supplied names defined with
--table-columns name1,name2,..., or indices of columns as they
appear in the input, beginning with 1, or names defined through a
--table-column attribute. It’s possible to mix names and indices.
The special placeholder '0' (e.g. -R0) may be used to specify all
columns and '-1' (e.g. -R -1) to specify the last visible column.
It’s possible to use ranges like '1-5' when addressing columns by
indices.
-J, --json
Use JSON output format to print the table. The option
--table-columns is required and the option --table-name is
recommended.
-c, --output-width width
Output is formatted to a width specified as a number of
characters. Note that input longer than width is not truncated
by default. The default is the terminal width in interactive
mode, and 80 columns in non-interactive mode. The column
headers are never truncated.
The placeholder unlimited (or 0) can be used to prevent
restricting the output width. This is recommended when
redirecting output to a file.
(The original long name of this option was --columns; this
name is deprecated since v2.30.)
-d, --table-noheadings
Omit printing the header. This option allows having
user-supplied column names on the command line, but keeps the
header hidden when printing the table.
-o, --output-separator string
Column delimiter for table output (default is two spaces).
-s, --separator separators
Possible input-item delimiters (default is whitespace).
-S, --use-spaces number
When not in table mode, use spaces instead of tabulators to
align the columns. This option specifies the minimum number of
spaces that separate two columns.
-t, --table
Determine 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.
--table-colorscheme name
Specifies color scheme. The default is name is "column". For
more details see the COLORS section.
-C, --table-column attributes
Define a column with a comma-separated list of attributes.
This option can be used more than once, every use defines a
single column. Attributes replace some of the --table-*
options: for example, --table-column name=FOO,right defines a
column where text is aligned to the right. The option is
mutually exclusive with -N/--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 enforce it,
specify the strictwidth attribute as well.
strictwidth
Strictly follow the width= setting.
noextreme
Ignore unusually long content width. See --table-noextreme
for more details.
wrap
Allow using a multi-line cell for long text if necessary.
See --table-wrap for more details.
hide
Don’t print the column. See --table-hide for more details.
json=type
Define the column type for JSON output. Supported types
are string, number and boolean.
color=name
Define the column color for output on the terminal. The
name is a color name (black, blink, blue, bold, brown,
cyan, darkgray, gray, green, halfbright, lightblue,
lightcyan, lightgray, lightgreen, lightmagenta, lightred,
magenta, red, reset, reverse, and yellow) or ANSI color
sequence number(s) separated by a semicolon, but without
the 'ESC[' prefix and 'm' suffix. For example, "37;41"
defines sequences for a red background and white
foreground. For more details see the COLORS section.
colorkey=name
Addresses color as defined in the color scheme. See
--table-colorscheme.
headercolor=name
Like color=, but define the color for column header only.
headercolorkey=name
Addresses color for header as defined in the color scheme.
See --table-colorscheme.
-N, --table-columns names
Specify column names with a comma-separated list. The names
are used for the table header and for column addressing in
option arguments. See also --table-column.
-l, --table-columns-limit number
Specify the maximum number of input columns. The last column
will contain all remaining line data if the limit is smaller
than the number of columns in the input data.
-R, --table-right columns
Right align text in the specified columns.
-T, --table-truncate columns
Specify the columns where text can be truncated when
necessary, otherwise very long table entries may be printed on
multiple lines.
-E, --table-noextreme columns
Specify the columns where longer-than-average content should
be ignored when calculating the column width. The option
influences width calculation and table formatting, but the
printed text is not affected.
This option is active by default for the last visible column.
-e, --table-header-repeat
Print header line for each page.
-W, --table-wrap columns
Specify the columns where multi-line cells can be used for
long text.
-H, --table-hide columns
Don’t print the specified columns. The special placeholder '-'
may be used to hide all unnamed columns (see --table-columns).
-O, --table-order columns
Specify the output column order.
-n, --table-name name
Specify the table name used for JSON output. The default is
"table".
-m, --table-maxout
Fill all available space on output.
-L, --keep-empty-lines
Preserve 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, --tree column
Specify 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-id column
Specify the column that contains each line’s unique child ID
for a child-parent relation.
-p, --tree-parent column
Specify the column that contains each line’s parent ID for a
child-parent relation.
-x, --fillrows
Fill rows before filling columns.
--color[=when]
Colorize the output. The optional argument when can be auto,
never or always. If the when argument is omitted, it defaults
to auto. The colors can be disabled; for the current built-in
default see the --help output. See also the COLORS section.
-h, --help
Display help text and exit.
-V, --version
Display version and exit.
The output colorization is implemented by terminal-colors.d(5)
functionality. Implicit coloring can be disabled by an empty file
/etc/terminal-colors.d/column.disable
for the column command or for all tools by
/etc/terminal-colors.d/disable
Since version 2.41, the $NO_COLOR environment variable is also
supported to disable output colorization unless explicitly enabled
by a command-line option.
The user-specific $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/terminal-colors.d or
$HOME/.config/terminal-colors.d overrides the global setting.
Note that the output colorization may be enabled by default, and
in this case terminal-colors.d directories do not have to exist
yet.
The default color scheme name is "column," and it can be
overridden by
--table-colorscheme name
Then name[.disable|enable|scheme] file may be used in
/etc/terminal-colors.d/, $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/terminal-colors.d, or
$HOME/.config/terminal-colors.d/.
The logical color name (key) in the color scheme may be addressed
by column properties colorkey= and headercolorkey=. For example
echo 'important red' > ~/.config/terminal-colors.d/cooltable.scheme
echo 'important-header 37;41' >> ~/.config/terminal-colors.d/cooltable.scheme
echo -e "a b c\naa bb cc\naaa bbb ccc" | column -t \
--table-colorscheme=cooltable \
-C name=AAA,colorkey=important,headercolorkey=important-header \
-C name=BBB,color=magenta,headercolor=cyan \
-C name=CCC,color=green
This will create a color scheme with the name "cooltable" and
colorize the first column header and data according to keys from
the scheme. The other two columns will be colorized by direct
color names.
The environment variable COLUMNS is used to determine the size of
the screen if no other information is available.
The column command appeared in 4.3BSD-Reno.
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.
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
colrm(1), ls(1), paste(1), sort(1)
For bug reports, use the issue tracker
<https://github.com/util-linux/util-linux/issues>.
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/>. This page is
part of the util-linux (a random collection of Linux utilities)
project. Information about the project can be found at
⟨https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux/⟩. If you have a
bug report for this manual page, send it to
util-linux@vger.kernel.org. This page was obtained from the
project's upstream Git repository
⟨git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/utils/util-linux/util-linux.git⟩ on
2025-08-11. (At that time, the date of the most recent commit that
was found in the repository was 2025-08-05.) If you discover any
rendering problems in this HTML version of the page, or you
believe there is a better or more up-to-date source for the page,
or you have corrections or improvements to the information in this
COLOPHON (which is not part of the original manual page), send a
mail to man-pages@man7.org
util-linux 2.42-start-521-ec46 2025-08-09 COLUMN(1)
Pages that refer to this page: colrm(1)
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HTML rendering created 2025-09-06 by Michael Kerrisk, author of The Linux Programming Interface. For details of in-depth Linux/UNIX system programming training courses that I teach, look here. Hosting by jambit GmbH. |
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