PASTE(1) BSD Reference Manual PASTE(1)
paste - merge corresponding or subsequent lines of files
paste [-s] [-d list] file [...]
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 empty 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 character
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 begins
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 in-
put 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.
cut(1)
The paste utility is expected to be IEEE Std 1003.2 ("POSIX.2") compati-
ble.
MirBSD #10-current July 27, 1991 1