Paste Command Examples
The paste command in Linux is a powerful utility used
to merge lines of files. It can concatenate lines from multiple
files, either column by column or line by line, making it invaluable
for text processing and data manipulation in the command line. This
tool is essential for developers and system administrators working
with shell scripts.
Concatenate Columns from Files
The most common use of the paste command is to combine
corresponding lines from multiple files into a single line,
separated by a tab character by default. This is useful for joining
related data from different sources.
# To concat columns from files:
paste <file1> <file2> ...List Files in Columns
You can use paste in conjunction with other commands
like ls to format output. For instance, to display a
list of files in the current directory across three columns, you can
pipe the output of ls to paste.
# To list the files in the current directory in three columns:
ls | paste - - -Combine Lines Sequentially
The -s option allows you to paste lines sequentially
from a single file, rather than in parallel. This is useful for
transforming multi-line records into single-line entries, often with
a specified delimiter.
# To combine pairs of lines from a file into single lines:
paste -s -d '\t\n' <file>Number Lines in a File
While nl is the dedicated command for numbering lines,
paste can achieve a similar result by combining the
output of sed (which prefixes lines with numbers) with
itself.
# To number the lines in a file, similar to nl(1):
sed = <file> | paste -s -d '\t\n' - -Create PATH-like Strings
paste can be used to format directory paths into a
colon-separated string, which is commonly used for environment
variables like PATH. This example finds all directories
named 'bin' and formats their paths.
# To create a colon-separated list of directories named bin, suitable for use in the PATH environment variable:
find / -name bin -type d | paste -s -d : -