how to replace paste utility with sed/awk

Shell Programming and Scripting
1

hi

I have two file that I would like to paste line by line. I use to use paste for this. But my current platform will not have paste utility. Could anyone please suggest how I it can be done using sed,awk or even simple bourne shell scripts?

Thanks
Sabina

2 
nawk '{
   FNR == NR { first[FNR]=$0; next }
   { print $0, (FNR in first) ? first[FNR] : "" }
}' file1 file2