Linux in a Nutshell, Fifth Edition

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Linux

Commands

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Copyright © 2006 O’Reilly & Associates, Inc. All rights reserved.

Options

-b Ignore backspace characters; helpful when printing manpages.

-f Process half-line vertical motions, but not reverse line motion.

(Normally, half-line input motion is displayed on the next full

line.)

-l n

Buffer at least n lines in memory. The default buffer size is 128

lines.

-x Normally, col saves printing time by converting sequences of

spaces to tabs. Use -x to suppress this conversion.

Examples

Run myfile through tbl and nroff, then capture output on screen by

filtering through col and more:

tbl myfile | nroff | col | more

Save manpage output for the ls command in out.print, stripping

out backspaces (which would otherwise appear as ^H):

man ls | col -b > out.print

colcrt

colcrt [options] [files]

A postprocessing filter that handles reverse linefeeds and escape

characters, allowing output from tbl or nroff to appear in reason-

able form on a terminal. Put half-line characters (e.g., subscripts or

superscripts) and underlining (changed to dashes) on a new line

between output lines.

Options

- Do not underline.

-2 Double space by printing all half-lines.

colrm

colrm [start [stop]]

Remove specified columns from a file, where a column is a single

character in a line. Read from standard input and write to standard

output. Columns are numbered starting with 1; begin ...