Reference: col
Author: Daniel Gilly & the Staff of O'Reilly & Associates
Date: 1998-08-06T21:52:23Z

#

| Chapter 2 UNIX Commands |

## col

    col [options]

A postprocessing filter that handles reverse linefeeds and escape characters, allowing output from tbl (or nroff, occasionally) to appear in reasonable form on a terminal.

### Options

-b

  Ignore backspace characters; helpful when printing man pages.

-f

  Process half-line vertical motions, but not reverse line motion. (Normally, half-line input motion is displayed on the next full line.)

-p

  Print unknown escape sequences (normally ignored) as regular characters. This option can garble output, so its use is not recommended.

-x

  Normally, col saves printing time by converting sequences of spaces to tabs. Use -x to suppress this conversion.

-h

  Save printing time by converting sequences of spaces to tabs.

### Examples

Run `file` through tbl and nroff, then capture output on screen by filtering through col and more:

>     tbl file | nroff | col | more

Save man page output in `file`.print, stripping out backspaces (which would otherwise appear as ^H):

>     man file | col -b > file.print

Reference: cof2elf |  | Reference: comb