Ubuntu – How to print multiline variables in side-by-side columns in bash

bashcommand linetext processing

I have two variables which contain multi-line information and I want to column them.

varA returns

Aug 01
Aug 04
Aug 16
Aug 26

and varB returns

04:25
07:28
03:39
10:06

if i print both variables, it returns

Aug01
Aug04
Aug16
Aug26
04:25
07:28
03:39
10:06

What I want to do is the following:

Aug01 04:25
Aug04 07:28
Aug16 03:39
Aug26 10:06

I'm new to using Linux and I would appreciate some advice.

Best Answer

Meet paste, part of the preinstalled GNU core utilities:

$ paste <(printf %s "$varA") <(printf %s "$varB")
Aug 01  04:25
Aug 04  07:28
Aug 16  03:39
Aug 26  10:06

paste takes files and not variables as input, so I used bash Process Substitution and just printed the variable content with printf. The default delimiter between columns is TAB, you can change that with the -d option, e.g. paste -d" " for a single space character. To learn more about paste have a look at the online manual or run info '(coreutils) paste invocation'.

Related Question