PASTE(1)                   OpenBSD Reference Manual                   PASTE(1)

NAME
     paste - merge corresponding or subsequent lines of files

SYNOPSIS
     paste [-s] [-d list] file [...]

DESCRIPTION
     The paste utility concatenates the corresponding lines of the given input
     files, replacing all but the last file's newline characters with a single
     tab character, and writes the resulting lines to standard output.  If
     end-of-file is reached on an input file while other input files still
     contain data, the file is treated as if it were an endless source of emp-
     ty lines.

     The options are as follows:

     -d list
             Use one or more of the provided characters to replace the newline
             characters instead of the default tab.  The characters in list
             are used circularly, i.e., when list is exhausted the first char-
             acter from list is reused.  This continues until a line from the
             last input file (in default operation) or the last line in each
             file (using the -s option) is displayed, at which time paste be-
             gins selecting characters from the beginning of list again.

             The following special characters can also be used in list:

             \n    newline character
             \t    tab character
             \\    backslash character
             \0    empty string (not a null character)

             Any other character preceded by a backslash is equivalent to the
             character itself.

     -s      Concatenate all of the lines of each separate input file in com-
             mand line order.  The newline character of every line except the
             last line in each input file is replaced with the tab character,
             unless otherwise specified by the -d option.

     If ``-'' is specified for one or more of the input files, the standard
     input is used; standard input is read one line at a time, circularly, for
     each instance of ``-''.

     The paste utility exits 0 on success or >0 if an error occurred.

SEE ALSO
     cut(1)

STANDARDS
     The paste utility is expected to be IEEE Std1003.2 (``POSIX.2'') compati-
     ble.

OpenBSD 3.0                      July 27, 1991                               1
