| COL(1) | General Commands Manual | COL(1) |
col —
col |
[-bfhpx] [-l
num] |
col utility filters out reverse (and half reverse)
line feeds so that the output is in the correct order with only forward and
half forward line feeds, and replaces white-space characters with tabs where
possible.
The col utility reads from the standard
input and writes to the standard output.
The options are as follows:
-b-f-h-l
num-pcol will filter out any control sequences from the
input other than those recognized and interpreted by itself, which are
listed below.-xIn the input stream, col understands both
the escape sequences of the form escape-digit mandated by
Version 2 of the Single UNIX Specification
(“SUSv2”) and the traditional
BSD format escape-control-character. The control
sequences for carriage motion and their ASCII values are as follows:
-f
mode, this sequence may also occur in the output stream.All unrecognized control characters and escape sequences are discarded.
The col utility keeps track of the
character set as characters are read and makes sure the character set is
correct when they are output.
If the input attempts to back up to the last flushed line,
col will display a warning message.
LANG, LC_ALL and
LC_CTYPE environment variables affect the execution of
col as described in
environ(7).
col utility exits 0 on success,
and >0 if an error occurs.
col to filter the output of
man(1) and remove the backspace
characters ( ^H ) before searching for some text:
man ls | col -b | grep HISTORY
col utility conforms to
Version 2 of the Single UNIX Specification
(“SUSv2”).
col command appeared in
Version 6 AT&T UNIX.
| November 1, 2020 | NetBSD 10.0 |