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| COL(1) | General Commands Manual | COL(1) |
NAME¶
col —
filter reverse line feeds from input
SYNOPSIS¶
col |
[-bfhpx] [-l
num] |
DESCRIPTION¶
Thecol utility filters out reverse (and half reverse)
line feeds so that the output is in the correct order with only forward and
half forward line feeds, and replaces white-space characters with tabs where
possible. This can be useful in processing the output of
nroff(1) and tbl(1).
The col utility reads from the standard
input and writes to the standard output.
The options are as follows:
-b- Do not output any backspaces, printing only the last character written to each column position.
-f- Forward half line feeds are permitted (``fine'' mode). Normally characters printed on a half line boundary are printed on the following line.
-h- Do not output multiple spaces instead of tabs (default).
-lnum- Buffer at least num lines in memory. By default, 128 lines are buffered.
-p- Force unknown control sequences to be passed through unchanged. Normally,
colwill filter out any control sequences from the input other than those recognized and interpreted by itself, which are listed below. -x- Output multiple spaces instead of tabs.
The control sequences for carriage motion that
col understands and their decimal values are listed
in the following table:
- ESC-7
- reverse line feed (escape then 7)
- ESC-8
- half reverse line feed (escape then 8)
- ESC-9
- half forward line feed (escape then 9)
- backspace
- moves back one column (8); ignored in the first column
- carriage return
- (13)
- newline
- forward line feed (10); also does carriage return
- shift in
- shift to normal character set (15)
- shift out
- shift to alternate character set (14)
- space
- moves forward one column (32)
- tab
- moves forward to next tab stop (9)
- vertical tab
- reverse line feed (11)
All unrecognized control characters and escape sequences are discarded.
The col utility keeps track of the
character set as characters are read and makes sure the character set is
correct when they are output.
If the input attempts to back up to the last flushed line,
col will display a warning message.
ENVIRONMENT¶
TheLANG, LC_ALL and
LC_CTYPE environment variables affect the execution of
col as described in environ(7).
EXIT STATUS¶
Thecol utility exits 0 on success,
and >0 if an error occurs.
SEE ALSO¶
colcrt(1), expand(1), nroff(1), tbl(1)STANDARDS¶
Thecol utility conforms to
Version 2 of the Single UNIX Specification
(“SUSv2”).
HISTORY¶
Acol command appeared in
Version 6 AT&T UNIX.
| August 4, 2004 | Linux 4.9.0-9-amd64 |