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📛 NAME

paste - merge lines of files

🚀 Quick Reference

Use Case	Command	Description
Merge two files line by line	paste file1 file2	Combine corresponding lines from each file, separated by TAB
Merge using custom delimiter	paste -d ',' file1 file2	Use comma instead of TAB to separate merged lines
Serialize file contents	paste -s file1 file2	Paste all lines of each file into a single line
Handle arbitrary filenames	find . -print0 | paste -z - -	Use zero‑byte delimiter for safe handling of special characters

📝 Synopsis

paste [OPTION]... [FILE]...

📖 Description

paste writes to standard output lines consisting of sequentially corresponding lines of each given file, separated by a TAB character. Standard input is used for a file name of - or if no input files are given.

An exit status of zero indicates success, and a nonzero value indicates failure.

⚙️ Options

• -s, --serial — 🔗 Paste the lines of one file at a time rather than one line from each file.
• -d DELIM-LIST, --delimiters=DELIM-LIST — 🔠 Consecutively use the characters in DELIM-LIST instead of TAB to separate merged lines. When DELIM-LIST is exhausted, start again at its beginning.
• -z, --zero-terminated — 🔢 Delimit items with a zero byte rather than a newline (ASCII LF). Treat input as items separated by ASCII NUL and terminate output items with ASCII NUL. This option is useful with perl -0, find -print0, and xargs -0.

💡 Examples

Take lines sequentially from each file:

$ paste num2 let3
1       a
2       b
        c

Duplicate lines from a file:

$ paste num2 let3 num2
1       a      1
2       b      2
        c

Intermix lines from stdin:

$ paste - let3 - < num2
1       a      2
        b
        c

Join consecutive lines with a space:

$ seq 4 | paste -d ' ' - -
1 2
3 4

Serial mode:

$ paste -s num2 let3
1       2
a       b       c

Custom delimiter:

$ paste -d '%_' num2 let3 num2
1%a_1
2%b_2
%c_

📚 See Also

See the Common options section of the coreutils manual for shared command‑line options.

📛 NAME 🚀 Quick Reference 📝 Synopsis 📖 Description ⚙️ Options 💡 Examples 📚 See Also