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HTML rendering created 2025-02-02 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 | 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 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 --table-\* options is a comma separated
list of user supplied names, defined with --table-column
name1,name2,..., indices of columns, as they appear in the input,
beginning with 1, or names, defined by a --table-columns
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. 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-noheadings
Omit 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-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 whitespaces instead of tabulators
to align the columns. This option specifies the minimum number
of whitespaces 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.
-C, --table-column attributes
Define 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 attribute as well.
strictwidth
Strictly follow column width= setting.
noextreme
Ignore unusually long cell 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 column type for JSON output. Supported types are
string, number and boolean.
-N, --table-columns names
Specify 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-limit number
Specify 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-right columns
Right align text in specified columns.
-T, --table-truncate columns
Specify columns where text can be truncated when necessary,
otherwise very long table entries may be printed on multiple
lines.
-E, --table-noextreme columns
Specify 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-repeat
Print header line for each page.
-W, --table-wrap columns
Specify columns where multi-line cells can be used for long
text.
-H, --table-hide columns
Don’t print 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 IDs
for a child-parent relation.
-p, --tree-parent column
Specify the column that contains each line’s parent IDs for a
child-parent relation.
-x, --fillrows
Fill rows before filling columns.
-h, --help
Display help text and exit.
-V, --version
Print version and exit.
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
2025-02-02. (At that time, the date of the most recent commit that
was found in the repository was 2025-01-30.) 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 2.41.devel-938-0a... 2025-01-15 COLUMN(1)
Pages that refer to this page: colrm(1)
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HTML rendering created 2025-02-02 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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