paste — Merge corresponding or subsequent lines of a file

Format

paste [–Bs] [–d list] [-W option[,option]...] file …

Description

paste concatenates lines of all the specified input files onto the standard output. If you specify – (dash) instead of a file, paste uses the standard input. Typically, an output line consists of the corresponding lines from all the input files. paste replaces the newline character at the end of each input line (except the one from the last file on the command line) with a tab character, or characters specified by the –d option.

Options

–B
Disables the automatic conversion of tagged files. This option is ignored if the filecodeset or pgmcodeset options (-W option) are specified.
–d list
Specifies a list of characters to be used one at a time instead of the tab character to replace the newline at the end of input lines. In a double-byte locale, list can contain double-byte characters. paste uses list circularly; when it exhausts the characters in list, it returns to the first character in the list. If you also specify the –s option, paste returns to the first character of list after processing each file. Otherwise, it returns to the first character after each line of output.

list can contain any of the following standard C escapes such as \n, \t, \r, \b, \\, and \0, where \0 indicates that no separator is to be used.

–s
Concatenates all lines from each input file together on the single output line. If the –s option is not specified and the end of the file is detected on any (but not all) of the input files, paste behaves as though empty lines have been read from those files.
-W option[,option]...
Specifies z/OS-specific options. The option keywords are case-sensitive. Possible options are:
filecodeset=codeset
Performs text conversion from one code set to another when reading from the file. The coded character set of the file is codeset. codeset can be a code set name known to the system or a numeric coded character set identifier (CCSID). Note that the command iconv -l lists existing CCSIDs along with their corresponding code set names. The filecodeset and pgmcodeset options can be used on files with any file tag.

If pgmcodeset is specified but filecodeset is omitted, then the default file code set is ISO8859-1 even if the file is tagged with a different code set. If neither filecodeset nor pgmcodeset is specified, text conversion will not occur unless automatic conversion is enabled or the _TEXT_CONV environment variable indicates text conversion. For more information about text conversion, see Controlling text conversion for z/OS UNIX shell commands.

If filecodeset or pgmcodeset is specified, then automatic conversion is disabled for this command invocation and the -B option is ignored if it is also specified. See z/OS UNIX System Services Planning for more information about automatic conversion.

When specifying values for filecodeset, use the values that Unicode Service supports. For more information about supported code sets, see z/OS Unicode Services User's Guide and Reference.

pgmcodeset=codeset
Performs text conversion from one code set to another when reading from the file. The coded character set of the program (command) is codeset. codeset can be a code set name known to the system or a numeric coded character set identifier (CCSID). Note that the command iconv -l lists existing CCSIDs along with their corresponding code set names. The filecodeset and pgmcodeset options can be used on files with any file tag.

If filecodeset is specified but pgmcodeset is omitted, then the default program code set is IBM-1047. If neither filecodeset nor pgmcodeset is specified, text conversion will not occur unless automatic conversion is enabled or the _TEXT_CONV environment variable indicates text conversion. For more information about text conversion, see Controlling text conversion for z/OS UNIX shell commands.

If filecodeset or pgmcodeset is specified, then automatic conversion is disabled for this command invocation and the -B option is ignored if it is also specified. See z/OS UNIX System Services Planning for more information about automatic conversion.

Restriction: The only supported values for pgmcodeset are IBM-1047 and 1047.

Examples

  1. To display the ls output in three tab-separated columns: 
    ls | paste - - -
  2. To concatenate lines in two text files containing UTF-8 characters, assuming that
    • The text files are untagged and you do not want to tag them or enable automatic conversion, and
    • You cannot alter the tag (for example, you are displaying untagged public text files or read-only text files)
    then issue: 
    paste -W filecodeset=UTF-8,pgmcodeset=IBM-1047 myUtf8File01 myUtf8File02
  3. To concatenate lines in three text files containing EBCDIC characters, assuming that automatic conversion has been enabled but the text files are incorrectly tagged as ASCII: 
    paste -B myMisTaggedFile01 myMisTaggedFile02 myMisTaggedFile03
  4. If file A contains: 
    a
b
c
    and file X contains 
    x
y
z
    then the command: 
    paste A X
    produces: 
    a      x
b      y
c      z
    and the command: 
    paste –s A X
    produces: 
    a      b      c
x      y      z

Localization

paste uses the following localization environment variables:
  • LANG
  • LC_ALL
  • LC_CTYPE
  • LC_MESSAGES
  • LC_SYNTAX
  • NLSPATH

See Localization for more information.

Environment variables

paste uses the following environment variable:
_TEXT_CONV
Contains text conversion information for the command. The text conversion information is not used when either the -B option or the filecodeset or pgmcodeset option (-W option) is specified. For more information about text conversion, see Controlling text conversion for z/OS UNIX shell commands.

Exit values

0
Successful completion
1
Failure due to any of the following:
  • Too many files specified
  • Inability to open a file
  • The code set is not valid
  • Could not turn off automatic conversion
  • Could not perform requested text conversion
2
Failure due to any of the following:
  • Incorrect command-line option
  • Missing input files

Messages

Possible error messages include:
Too many files at name
You specified more files than paste can handle. The name given in the error message is the name of the first file that paste could not open. The number of files that paste can open depends on the number of files that other processes have open.

Portability

POSIX.2, X/Open Portability Guide, UNIX System V.

The –B and -W options are extensions of the POSIX standard.

Related information

cut

Parent topic: Shell command descriptions