The paste command is used to merge lines of files. Following are the commonly used switches.
| Switch | Action |
| -d | Specify delimiter |
| -s | Paste one file at a time instead of in parallel |
The best example to clearly understand the -s switch is to see it −
[root@centosLocal Documents]# cat myOS.txt && cat lines.txt
Linux
Windows
Solaris
OS X
BSD
line 1
line 2
line 3
line 4
line 5
[root@centosLocal Documents]# past myOS.txt lines.txt
[root@centosLocal Documents]# paste myOS.txt lines.txt
Linux line 1
Windows line 2
Solaris line 3
OS X line 4
BSD line 5
[root@centosLocal Documents]# paste -s myOS.txt lines.txt
Linux Windows Solaris OS X BSD
line 1 line 2 line 3 line 4 line 5
[root@centosLocal Documents]#
So, if we wanted a “:” colon or Tab-separated file by combining two different files, the paste command makes this fairly simple −
[root@centosLocal Documents]# paste -d”:” myOS.txt lines.txt
Linux:line 1
Windows:line 2
Solaris:line 3
OS X:line 4
BSD:line 5
[root@centosLocal Documents]# paste -d”\\t” myOS.txt lines.txt
Linux line 1
Windows line 2
Solaris line 3
OS X line 4
BSD line 5
[root@centosLocal Documents]#
With paste, it’s pretty easy to take a file, and make it into Tab-separated columns −
[root@centosLocal Documents]# paste -d”\t” – – < lines.txt
line 1 line 2
line 3 line 4
line 5
[root@centosLocal Documents]#