.TH "pasty" "1" "Dec 2008" "pasty-0.1" "pasty"
.SH "NAME"
pasty \- A simple command line pasting utility
.SH "SYNOPSIS"
.B pasty
.I [column specifiers] file1 file2 ...
.PP

.SH "DESCRIPTION"
pasty is a simple commandline tool for pasting specific columns 
from an arbitrary number of column centric ASCII input files into 
a single output file. pasty currently expects the columns in the
input files to be separated by spaces (one or more).

.SH "OPTIONS"
pasty currently only supports a single optional specifier, indicating
what columns to extract from each of the input files. Without the
specifier, pasty will paste complete rows for each file and the
output is then identical to coreutil's paste command.


.TP 4m
.PD 0
\fI-i SEPARATOR
.TP
.PD
\fI--insep SEPARATOR


Specify the \fBcharacter\fR used as separator for the input file 
columns. The input separator is applied greedily, i.e., columns
separated by multiple instances of input separator are treated as
a single one. The default separator is a single whitespace character
(" ").


.TP 4m
.PD 0
\fI-o SEPARATOR
.TP
.PD
\fI--outsep SEPARATOR


Specify the \fBstring\fR used as separator between the columns in the 
output. Default is a single whitespace. 
NOTE: In order to avoid that the shell interprets certain characters,
the string might need to be quoted. 


.TP 4m
.PD 0
\fI-r PARSE_SPEC
.TP
.PD
\fI--parsespecs PARSE_SPEC\fR


Extract the columns specified in PARSE_SPEC for each file provided
on the command line. PARSE_SPEC is a colon separated list of 
FILE_SPECs. FILE_SPEC is a comma separated list of zero based column
indices to be extracted for each input file and pasted into the output
file. Column indices larger than the number of columns are ignored and
the number of FILE_SPEC elements can be smaller than the total number 
of input files. In this case, the last FILE_SPEC provided is used for 
all remaining files. Without PARSE_SPEC, all columns are pasted
for each input file.


.TP 4m
.PD 0
\fI-w PASTE_SPEC
.TP
.PD
\fI--pastespecs PASTE_SPEC


Paste the columns in the order given in PASTE_SPEC. PASTE_SPEC
is a comma separated list of zero based column indices (0 refers
to the first parsed column, 1 to the second parsed column, etc.).
PASTE_SPEC can list all parsed columns in any order and columns
may appear multiple times.


.SH "EXAMPLES"

.nf
.B pasty file1 files
.fi
Paste all columns of file1 and file2 into the output file.
.PP
.nf
.B pasty -r 1,2:3 file1 file2
.fi
Paste columns 1,2 (zero based!) of file1 and column 3 of file2 into
the output file.
.PP
.nf
.B pasty -r 1,2:3 file1 file2 file3 file4
.fi
Paste columns 1,2 (zero based!) of file1 and column 3 of file2, file3
and file4 into the output file.
.PP
.nf
.B pasty -r 0 file1 file2 file3 file4
.fi
Paste the zeroth columns of file1, file2, file3, and file4 into the
output file.
.PP
.nf
.B pasty -r 0 -o "::" file1 file2 file3 file4
.fi
Paste the zeroth columns of file1, file2, file3, and file4 into the
output file and separate the columns by a double colon.
.PP
.nf
.B pasty -r 0 -i : file1 file2 
.fi
Paste the zeroth columns of file1 and file2. The columns in each
file are assumed to be separated by any number of colons.
.PP
.nf
.B pasty -r 0,1 -w 3,2,1,0 file1 file2 
.fi
Read columns 0 and 1 from file1 and file2 and paste them in
reverse order.
.PP
.PP
.nf
.B pasty -r 0,1 -w 0,1,0,2,0,3 file1 file2 
.fi
Read columns 0 and 1 from file1 and file2 and paste 
column 0 of file1 combined with column 1 file1 and
columns 0,1 of file2.
.PP


.SH "REPORTING BUGS"

Please report bugs to <markusle@gmail.com>


.SH "COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE"

pasty is released under the GPL version 3.
There is NO warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS
FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

(C) 2008 Markus Dittrich


.SH "AUTHOR"
.nf
Markus Dittrich <markusle@gmail.com>
.fi