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Comment by 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.

8 comments

creshal

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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 ...

    • discardorama  11 years ago

      I've used paste all my life, but I never knew you could do

        paste - -

      to convert stdin into 2 columns (or "paste - - - -" to get 4 columns!). TIL ...

    • father_of_two  11 years ago

      seq has the -s flag which voids the need of the paste for that command:

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

      But I agree that the paste is very useful.

        # a few random samples for an IN SQL statement
  $ shuf -i 1-500000 -n 5 | paste -s -d ,
  371492,250061,266669,455846,295852

  # we can even get PI
  $ ( seq -s + -f '4/%g' 1 4 100000 && seq -s - -f '4/%g' 3 4 100000 ) | paste -s -d - | bc -l
  3.14157265358979523735

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