I get nice, clean output in my terminal. I think email might just be
messing up the original example. The column command also has a flag to
specify what character to use for separating the columns. The default is
whitespace.

I use it pretty regularly to separate based on tabs.

$ column -s "\t" -t foo.txt

Or work with some CSV files?

$ column -s ";" -t foo.csv
$ column -s "," -t foo.csv


On Wed, Feb 5, 2014 at 12:42 PM, Steven S. Critchfield
<[email protected]>wrote:

> ----- Original Message -----
> > Consider when you type mount ( at least on OSX)
> >
> > $mount
> > /dev/disk0s2 on / (hfs, local, journaled)
> > devfs on /dev (devfs, local, nobrowse)
> > map -hosts on /net (autofs, nosuid, automounted, nobrowse)
> > map auto_home on /home (autofs, automounted, nobrowse)
> >
> > it gave me what I wanted, but it sure is sloppy. Let's see if we can't
> > clean things up a bit.
> >
> > $ mount | column -t
> > /dev/disk0s2 on / (hfs, local, journaled)
> > devfs on /dev (devfs, local, nobrowse)
> > map -hosts on /net (autofs, nosuid,
> > automounted, nobrowse)
> > map auto_home on /home (autofs, automounted, nobrowse)
> >
> >
> > column can be used on any bit of output that you want in clean
> > columns.
> >
> > This tip comes from reddit.com/r/linuxadmin
> >
> http://www.reddit.com/r/linuxadmin/comments/1x0ql2/whats_a_linux_command_you_wish_you_had_known/
>
> Interesting command. I'll have to look at it again later. It did seem to
> help the columns line up, but I noticed that the example has varied output
> and made the columns not as useful.
>
> I could see using it possibly to correct text that was corrupted in a copy
> paste maybe.
>
> --
> Steven Critchfield [email protected]
>
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