is there a short one-liner that can print out in columns instead of a long list?
as in, instead of:
apples
oranges
cats
dogs
sky
monkey
giraffe
cups
spoons
tv
cable
it'll print something like this (properly indented of course 
):
apples cats sky giraffe cups tv
oranges dogs monkey cups spoons cable
Shell: bash
OS: linux and sunos
Hi
Not sure whether this is a good way of doing this:
$ awk 'NR%2{x=x?x"\t"$0:$0;next}{y=y?y"\t"$0:$0;}END{print x"\n"y;}' file
apples cats sky giraffe spoons cable
oranges dogs monkey cups tv
Guru
tried this. didn't work. it jumbles it up. some are properly aligned and others are just all meshed together. 
Hi.
Perhaps:
SYNOPSIS
column [-ntx] [-c columns] [-s sep] [file ...]
DESCRIPTION
The column utility formats its input into multiple columns.
...
as in:
% column -c60 data3
apples cats sky giraffe spoons cable
oranges dogs monkey cups tv
The tab separator may look like oranges and dogs are together, but they have whitespace between them on my terminal.
You can jiggle it with expand:
% column -c60 data3|expand -10
apples cats sky giraffe spoons cable
oranges dogs monkey cups tv
Best wishes ... cheers, drl
thank you! this works.
works like this:
your command | column
very very simple!
Note: column is not generally available on unix systems...
try with nawk
or try this
# nawk 'NR%2{if(x)x=x"\t"$0;else x=$0;next}{if(y)y=y"\t"$0;else y=$0}END{print x"\n"y}' infile
apples cats sky giraffe spoons cable
oranges dogs monkey cups tv
In this particular case:
awk 'END{printf "\n%s\n",n} getline p{n=n (n?ORS:x) p}1' ORS='\t' infile
General case perhaps:
xargs -n 1 < infile | awk '{n=(NR-1)%r; R[n]=R[n] (R[n]?"\t":x) $1} END{for(i=0;i<r;i++)print R}' r=2
r is the number of rows...
Hi.
Although command column might not be on some UNIX boxes, I'd rather have a limited general facility like column, rather than a plethora of single-shot solutions for lots of similar, but different situations.
The perl module Array::columnize allows one to create a work-alike. We use one such for the cases when column might not exist on a platform, like so:
#!/usr/bin/env bash
# @(#) s1 Demonstrate columnize with standard GNU/Linux column, local my-columns.
# Utility functions: print-as-echo, print-line-with-visual-space, debug.
# export PATH="/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin"
pe() { for _i;do printf "%s" "$_i";done; printf "\n"; }
pl() { pe;pe "-----" ;pe "$*"; }
edges() { local _f _n _l;: ${1?"edges: need file"}; _f=$1;_l=$(wc -l $_f);
head -${_n:=3} $_f ; pe "--- ( $_l: lines total )" ; tail -$_n $_f ; }
db() { ( printf " db, ";for _i;do printf "%s" "$_i";done;printf "\n" ) >&2 ; }
db() { : ; }
C=$HOME/bin/context && [ -f $C ] && $C column my-columns divepm
FILE=${1-data1}
pl " Input data file $FILE:"
cat $FILE
pl " Results, standard Linux column:"
column -c60 $FILE
pl " Results, work-alike for Linux column, \"my-columns\":"
my-columns -w 60 $FILE
pl " Characteristics of my-columns:"
v1=$( command -v my-columns )
file "$v1" | sed 's/^.*: //'
pe "Lines: $( wc -l < $( command -v my-columns ) )"
pe "Modules used by my-columns:"
divepm -q -i $v1
exit 0
producing:
% ./s1
Environment: LC_ALL = C, LANG = C
(Versions displayed with local utility "version")
OS, ker|rel, machine: Linux, 2.6.26-2-amd64, x86_64
Distribution : Debian GNU/Linux 5.0.8 (lenny)
bash GNU bash 3.2.39
column - ( /usr/bin/column, 2007-11-20 )
my-columns (local) 1.2
divepm (local) 1.2
-----
Input data file data1:
apples
oranges
cats
dogs
sky
monkey
giraffe
cups
spoons
tv
cable
-----
Results, standard Linux column:
apples cats sky giraffe spoons cable
oranges dogs monkey cups tv
-----
Results, work-alike for Linux column, "my-columns":
apples cats sky giraffe spoons cable
oranges dogs monkey cups tv
-----
Characteristics of my-columns:
a perl script text executable
Lines: 67
Modules used by my-columns:
1.06 warnings
1.04 strict
1.04 English
1.08 Carp
2.37 Getopt::Long
0.4.2 Array::Columnize
1.11 feature
I encourage other organizations to do the same, perhaps contrinuting to The Comprehensive Perl Archive Network - www.cpan.org and possibly to PPT: Unix Reconstruction Project
Best wishes ... cheers, drl
try xargs
xargs -n 10 < filename