lam(1) BSD General Commands Manual lam(1)
NAME
lam -- laminate files
SYNOPSIS
lam [-f min.max] [-s sepstring] [-t c] file ...
lam [-p min.max] [-s sepstring] [-t c] file ...
DESCRIPTION
The lam utility copies the named files side by side onto the standard
output. The n-th input lines from the input files are considered frag-
ments of the single long n-th output line into which they are assembled.
The name `-' means the standard input, and may be repeated.
Normally, each option affects only the file after it. If the option let-
ter is capitalized it affects all subsequent files until it appears again
uncapitalized. The options are described below:
-f min.max
Print line fragments according to the format string min.max,
where min is the minimum field width and max the maximum field
width. If min begins with a zero, zeros will be added to make up
the field width, and if it begins with a `-', the fragment will
be left-adjusted within the field.
-p min.max
Like -f, but pad this file's field when end-of-file is reached
and other files are still active.
-s sepstring
Print sepstring before printing line fragments from the next
file. This option may appear after the last file.
-t c The input line terminator is c instead of a newline. The newline
normally appended to each output line is omitted.
To print files simultaneously for easy viewing use pr(1).
EXAMPLES
The command
lam file1 file2 file3 file4
joins 4 files together along each line. To merge the lines from four
different files use
lam file1 -S "\
" file2 file3 file4
Every 2 lines of a file may be joined on one line with
lam - - < file
and a form letter with substitutions keyed by `@' can be done with
lam -t @ letter changes
SEE ALSO
join(1), paste(1), pr(1), printf(3)
STANDARDS
Some of the functionality of lam is standardized as the paste(1) utility
by IEEE Std 1003.2 (``POSIX.2'').
BUGS
The lam utility does not recognize multibyte characters.
BSD August 12, 2004 BSD
Mac OS X 10.6 - Generated Thu Sep 17 20:07:58 CDT 2009