I have the following two files ( I padded the lines with dots so every line in a file is the same width and made file1 all caps to make it more clear).
contents of file1:
ETIAM......
SED........
MAECENAS...
DONEC......
SUSPENDISSE
contents of file2
Lorem....
Proin....
Nunc.....
Quisque..
Aenean...
Nam......
Vivamus..
Curabitur
Nullam...
Notice that file2 is longer than file1.
When I run this command:
paste file1 file2
I get this output
ETIAM...... Lorem....
SED........ Proin....
MAECENAS... Nunc.....
DONEC...... Quisque..
SUSPENDISSE Aenean...
Nam......
Vivamus..
Curabitur
Nullam...
What can I do for the output to be as follows ?
ETIAM...... Lorem....
SED........ Proin....
MAECENAS... Nunc.....
DONEC...... Quisque..
SUSPENDISSE Aenean...
Nam......
Vivamus..
Curabitur
Nullam...
I tried
paste file1 file2 | column -t
but it does this:
ETIAM...... Lorem....
SED........ Proin....
MAECENAS... Nunc.....
DONEC...... Quisque..
SUSPENDISSE Aenean...
Nam......
Vivamus..
Curabitur
Nullam...
non as ugly as the original output but wrong column-wise anyway.
Best Answer
Assuming you don't have any tab characters in your files,
with the arg to
-t
suitably chosen to cover the desired max line width in file1.OP has added a more flexible solution:
I did this so it works without the magic number 13:
It's not easy to type but can be used in a script.