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PROLOG | NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | OPTIONS | OPERANDS | STDIN | INPUT FILES | ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES | ASYNCHRONOUS EVENTS | STDOUT | STDERR | OUTPUT FILES | EXTENDED DESCRIPTION | EXIT STATUS | CONSEQUENCES OF ERRORS | APPLICATION USAGE | EXAMPLES | RATIONALE | FUTURE DIRECTIONS | SEE ALSO | COPYRIGHT |
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PASTE(1P) POSIX Programmer's Manual PASTE(1P)
This manual page is part of the POSIX Programmer's Manual. The
Linux implementation of this interface may differ (consult the
corresponding Linux manual page for details of Linux behavior), or
the interface may not be implemented on Linux.
paste — merge corresponding or subsequent lines of files
paste [-s] [-d list] file...
The paste utility shall concatenate the corresponding lines of the
given input files, and write the resulting lines to standard
output.
The default operation of paste shall concatenate the corresponding
lines of the input files. The <newline> of every line except the
line from the last input file shall be replaced with a <tab>.
If an end-of-file condition is detected on one or more input
files, but not all input files, paste shall behave as though empty
lines were read from the files on which end-of-file was detected,
unless the -s option is specified.
The paste utility shall conform to the Base Definitions volume of
POSIX.1‐2017, Section 12.2, Utility Syntax Guidelines.
The following options shall be supported:
-d list Unless a <backslash> character appears in list, each
character in list is an element specifying a delimiter
character. If a <backslash> character appears in list,
the <backslash> character and one or more characters
following it are an element specifying a delimiter
character as described below. These elements specify one
or more delimiters to use, instead of the default <tab>,
to replace the <newline> of the input lines. The
elements in list shall be used circularly; that is, when
the list is exhausted the first element from the list is
reused. When the -s option is specified:
* The last <newline> in a file shall not be modified.
* The delimiter shall be reset to the first element of
list after each file operand is processed.
When the -s option is not specified:
* The <newline> characters in the file specified by
the last file operand shall not be modified.
* The delimiter shall be reset to the first element of
list each time a line is processed from each file.
If a <backslash> character appears in list, it and the
character following it shall be used to represent the
following delimiter characters:
\n <newline>.
\t <tab>.
\\ <backslash> character.
\0 Empty string (not a null character). If '\0' is
immediately followed by the character 'x', the
character 'X', or any character defined by the
LC_CTYPE digit keyword (see the Base Definitions
volume of POSIX.1‐2017, Chapter 7, Locale), the
results are unspecified.
If any other characters follow the <backslash>, the
results are unspecified.
-s Concatenate all of the lines from each input file into
one line of output per file, in command line order. The
<newline> of every line except the last line in each
input file shall be replaced with a <tab>, unless
otherwise specified by the -d option. If an input file
is empty, the output line corresponding to that file
shall consist of only a <newline> character.
The following operand shall be supported:
file A pathname of an input file. If '-' is specified for one
or more of the files, the standard input shall be used;
the standard input shall be read one line at a time,
circularly, for each instance of '-'. Implementations
shall support pasting of at least 12 file operands.
The standard input shall be used only if one or more file operands
is '-'. See the INPUT FILES section.
The input files shall be text files, except that line lengths
shall be unlimited.
The following environment variables shall affect the execution of
paste:
LANG Provide a default value for the internationalization
variables that are unset or null. (See the Base
Definitions volume of POSIX.1‐2017, Section 8.2,
Internationalization Variables the precedence of
internationalization variables used to determine the
values of locale categories.)
LC_ALL If set to a non-empty string value, override the values
of all the other internationalization variables.
LC_CTYPE Determine the locale for the interpretation of sequences
of bytes of text data as characters (for example,
single-byte as opposed to multi-byte characters in
arguments and input files).
LC_MESSAGES
Determine the locale that should be used to affect the
format and contents of diagnostic messages written to
standard error.
NLSPATH Determine the location of message catalogs for the
processing of LC_MESSAGES.
Default.
Concatenated lines of input files shall be separated by the <tab>
(or other characters under the control of the -d option) and
terminated by a <newline>.
The standard error shall be used only for diagnostic messages.
None.
None.
The following exit values shall be returned:
0 Successful completion.
>0 An error occurred.
If one or more input files cannot be opened when the -s option is
not specified, a diagnostic message shall be written to standard
error, but no output is written to standard output. If the -s
option is specified, the paste utility shall provide the default
behavior described in Section 1.4, Utility Description Defaults.
The following sections are informative.
When the escape sequences of the list option-argument are used in
a shell script, they must be quoted; otherwise, the shell treats
the <backslash> as a special character.
Conforming applications should only use the specific
<backslash>-escaped delimiters presented in this volume of
POSIX.1‐2017. Historical implementations treat '\x', where 'x' is
not in this list, as 'x', but future implementations are free to
expand this list to recognize other common escapes similar to
those accepted by printf and other standard utilities.
Most of the standard utilities work on text files. The cut utility
can be used to turn files with arbitrary line lengths into a set
of text files containing the same data. The paste utility can be
used to create (or recreate) files with arbitrary line lengths.
For example, if file contains long lines:
cut -b 1-500 -n file > file1
cut -b 501- -n file > file2
creates file1 (a text file) with lines no longer than 500 bytes
(plus the <newline>) and file2 that contains the remainder of the
data from file. Note that file2 is not a text file if there are
lines in file that are longer than 500 + {LINE_MAX} bytes. The
original file can be recreated from file1 and file2 using the
command:
paste -d "\0" file1 file2 > file
The commands:
paste -d "\0" ...
paste -d "" ...
are not necessarily equivalent; the latter is not specified by
this volume of POSIX.1‐2017 and may result in an error. The
construct '\0' is used to mean ``no separator'' because historical
versions of paste did not follow the syntax guidelines, and the
command:
paste -d"" ...
could not be handled properly by getopt().
1. Write out a directory in four columns:
ls | paste - - - -
2. Combine pairs of lines from a file into single lines:
paste -s -d "\t\n" file
None.
None.
Section 1.4, Utility Description Defaults, cut(1p), grep(1p),
pr(1p)
The Base Definitions volume of POSIX.1‐2017, Chapter 7, Locale,
Chapter 8, Environment Variables, Section 12.2, Utility Syntax
Guidelines
Portions of this text are reprinted and reproduced in electronic
form from IEEE Std 1003.1-2017, Standard for Information
Technology -- Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX), The
Open Group Base Specifications Issue 7, 2018 Edition, Copyright
(C) 2018 by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers,
Inc and The Open Group. In the event of any discrepancy between
this version and the original IEEE and The Open Group Standard,
the original IEEE and The Open Group Standard is the referee
document. The original Standard can be obtained online at
http://www.opengroup.org/unix/online.html .
Any typographical or formatting errors that appear in this page
are most likely to have been introduced during the conversion of
the source files to man page format. To report such errors, see
https://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/reporting_bugs.html .
IEEE/The Open Group 2017 PASTE(1P)
Pages that refer to this page: cut(1p)
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HTML rendering created 2025-09-06 by Michael Kerrisk, author of The Linux Programming Interface. For details of in-depth Linux/UNIX system programming training courses that I teach, look here. Hosting by jambit GmbH. |
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