LAM(1) BSD General Commands Manual LAM(1)NAMElam — laminate files
SYNOPSISlam [-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 ALSOjoin(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”).
HISTORY
The lam utility first appeared in 4.2BSD.
BUGS
The lam utility does not recognize multibyte characters.
BSD August 12, 2004 BSD
