8.2 paste: Merge lines of files ¶

paste writes to standard output lines consisting of sequentially corresponding lines of each given file, separated by a delimiter character (default is the TAB character). The newline of every line except the line from the last input file is replaced with a delimiter character. Standard input is used for a file name of ‘-’ or if no input files are given.

Synopsis:

paste [option]... [file]...

For example, with:

$ cat num2
1
2
$ cat let3
a
b
c

Take lines sequentially from each file:

$ paste num2 let3
1       a
2       b
        c

Duplicate lines from a file:

$ paste num2 let3 num2
1       a      1
2       b      2
        c

Intermix lines from standard input:

$ paste - let3 - < num2
1       a      2
        b
        c

Join consecutive lines with a space:

$ seq 4 | paste -d ' ' - -
1 2
3 4

Comma separate data:

$ seq 4 | paste -s -d ','
1,2,3,4

The program accepts the following options. Also see Common options.

‘-s’ ¶

‘--serial’

Paste the lines of one file at a time rather than one line from each file. The newline of every line except the last line in each input file is replaced with a delimiter character. Using the above example data:

$ paste -s num2 let3
1       2
a       b       c

‘-d delim-list’ ¶

‘--delimiters=delim-list’

Consecutively use the characters in delim-list instead of TAB to separate merged lines. When delim-list is exhausted, start again at its beginning.

The following backslash escape sequences are recognized in delim-list:

‘\0 The empty string (not the NUL character)’

‘\n newline’

‘\t TAB’

‘\\ A backslash’

‘\b backspace (GNU extension)’

‘\f form feed (GNU extension)’

‘\r carriage return (GNU extension)’

‘\v vertical tab (GNU extension)’

It is an error if no character follows an unescaped backslash. As a GNU extension, a backslash followed by a character not listed above is interpreted as that character.

Using the above example data:

$ paste -d '%_' num2 let3 num2
1%a_1
2%b_2
%c_

‘-z’ ¶

‘--zero-terminated’

Delimit items with a zero byte rather than a newline (ASCII LF). I.e., treat input as items separated by ASCII NUL and terminate output items with ASCII NUL. This option can be useful in conjunction with ‘perl -0’ or ‘find -print0’ and ‘xargs -0’ which do the same in order to reliably handle arbitrary file names (even those containing blanks or other special characters).

An exit status of zero indicates success, and a nonzero value indicates failure.