STANNIX Community

Community

Manual: column

← Back to Index

COLUMN(1) User Commands COLUMN(1)

NAME
column - columnate lists

SYNOPSIS
column [options] [file ...]

DESCRIPTION
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 convention.

OPTIONS
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
Display version and exit.

ENVIRONMENT
The environment variable COLUMNS is used to determine the size of the screen if no other information is available.

HISTORY
The column command appeared in 4.3BSD-Reno.

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:

SEE ALSO
colrm(1), ls(1), paste(1), sort(1)

REPORTING BUGS
For bug reports, use the issue tracker .

AVAILABILITY
The column command is part of the util-linux package which can be downloaded from Linux Kernel Archive
.

util-linux 2.41.3 2025-12-15 COLUMN(1)

← Back to Index

Manual: column

Related Commands: