DESCRIPTION
lam copies the named files side by side onto the standard output. The
n-th input lines from the input
files are considered fragments 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 letter 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