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Comment by motters

11 years ago

That's the thing about unix-like systems. No matter how much you have learned there's always some command you don't know.

9 comments

motters

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creshal  11 years ago

paste was my most recent "holy shit this saves so much time" discovery. I blame it on the not quite intuitive name.

  • nchelluri  11 years ago

    What do you use it for?

    • pwg  11 years ago

      One use is converting columns of numbers into math strings for bc.

      Example (contrived):

          $ seq 10 20 | paste -s -d +
    10+11+12+13+14+15+16+17+18+19+20

    $ seq 10 20 | paste -s -d + | bc
    165

      Or converting columns of strings into regex 'or' clauses for searching (contrived example again):

          $ cut -f 3 -d , something.csv | paste -s -d "|"
    a|b|c|d|e|f

    $ egrep "$(cut -f 3 -d , something.csv | paste -s -d "|")" another_file
    ... result lines appear here ...

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