COL(1)COL(1)

NAME

col – column alignment

SYNOPSIS

col [ -bfx ]

DESCRIPTION

Col overlays lines to expunge reverse line feeds (ESC-7) and half line feeds (ESC-9 and ESC-8) as produced by nroff for .2C in ms(6) or man(6) and for tbl(1). Col is a pure filter. It normally emits only full line feeds; option -f (fine) allows half line feeds too. Option -b removes backspaces, printing just one of each pile of overstruck characters. Col normally converts white space to tabs; option -x overrides this feature. Other escaped characters and non-printing characters are ignored.

EXAMPLES

tbl file | nroff -ms | col | p

Format some tables for printing on typewriters; use col to remove reverse line feeds, and paginate the output.  

SOURCE

/sys/src/cmd/col.c

SEE

pr(1)

BUGS

Col can’t back up more than 128 lines or handle more than 800 characters per line, and understands VT (013) as reverse line feed.