How to align columns in output from a UNIX command?

I used to know of a command -- an actual command mind you, not sed/awk magic -- that formatted its input to be aligned in columns. For example, if you ran:

% echo -e "aaaaa bbbbbbb\ncc ddd" aaaaa bbbbbbb cc ddd 

But if you ran the output through the command which I've forgotten the name of:

% echo -e "aaaaa bbbbbbb\ncc ddd" | mystery_command aaaaa bbbbbbb cc ddd 

Does anyone know the name of that command?

2 Answers

It's column. Try for example echo -e "aaaaa bbbbbbb\ncc ddd" | column -t.

awk solution that deals with stdin

Since column is not POSIX, maybe this is:

mycolumn() ( file="${1:--}" if [ "$file" = - ]; then file="$(mktemp)" cat >"${file}" fi awk ' FNR == 1 { if (NR == FNR) next } NR == FNR { for (i = 1; i <= NF; i++) { l = length($i) if (w[i] < l) w[i] = l } next } { for (i = 1; i <= NF; i++) printf "%*s", w[i] + (i > 1 ? 1 : 0), $i print "" } ' "$file" "$file" if [ "$file" = - ]; then rm "$file" fi ) 

Test:

printf '12 1234 1 12345678 1 123 1234 123456 123456 ' > file 

Test commands:

mycolumn file mycolumn <file mycolumn - <file 

Output for all:

 12 1234 1 12345678 1 123 1234 123456 123456 

See also: