How to wrap text into two columns

text formattingtext;

fold can wrap the line if it has more than a certain amount of characters. However, I want to wrap a text file which has less than 40 characters in each line into two columns (80 chars per line total).

I want to make

apple
banana
(28 items omitted)
grape
guava

into

apple                                   ...
banana                                  ...
(12 items omitted)                      (12 items omitted)
...                                     grape
...                                     guava

How can I make it?

Best Answer

Using the -COLUMN or --columns=COLUMN option of pr

-COLUMN, --columns=COLUMN
       output COLUMN columns and print columns down, unless -a is used.
       Balance number of lines in the columns on each page

so either

pr -t -2 yourfile

pr -t --columns=2 yourfile

For example, augmenting your entries with some random dictionary words,

$ cat << EOF | pr -t -2
> apple
> banana
> `shuf -n28 /usr/share/dict/words`
> grape
> guava
> EOF
apple                               overachieves
banana                              wickerwork
cottonmouths                        supersonic
adapter's                           draftiest
boudoir's                           insisting
cruised                             programs
mousetrap                           parcel
shticks                             basically
TLC's                               coruscates
conduction                          Jones
geeing                              Ty
gloamings                           bondage
investing                           candelabra's
radiotherapists                     Inchon's
clasp's                             grape
critters                            guava

Related Solutions

Man Text – How to Word Wrap and Align Text Like Man Output

That would be GROFF.
(Older Unix version use NROFF or TROFF, but they are all different programs in the same family.)

Please note that it is not a simple command that operates on a text-file. It requires formatting instructions to be inserted in the text.
In fact it operates much more like a compiler.
If you are familiar with TeX or LaTeX than you know the principle, but the various ROFF style programms have a much simpler command language.

Shell – Formatting text into columns

If the input had been only two columns, I would have suggested to use column -t. This doesn't quite work here though since the column utility will treat any number of spaces or tabs as column delimiters:

$ column -t file1
John     1      
Peter    2      
Michael  Rod  3 
Su       7      
Louise   9

"Michael Rod" is two columns, so that single row has one column more than the other rows, which messes up the output.

We can work around this by inserting a tab character before the last column and then let column use (only) that as a delimiter:

$ awk '{ $NF = "\t" $NF; print }' file1 | column -t -s $'\t'
John          1
Peter         2
Michael Rod   3
Su            7
Louise        9

In Awk, NF is the number of fields (columns), and $NF is the data in the last field. The script I'm using simply modifies the data of the last field by prepending a tab character, before printing the complete line.

If your shell doesn't understand $'\t', then you could pick another character that is not part of the data:

awk '{ $NF = "@" $NF; print }' file1 | column -t -s '@'
John          1
Peter         2
Michael Rod   3
Su            7
Louise        9

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Man Text – How to Word Wrap and Align Text Like Man Output

Shell – Formatting text into columns

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