| COL(1) | General Commands Manual | COL(1) | 
col —
| col | [ -bfhpx] [-lnum] | 
col utility filters out reverse (and half reverse)
  line feeds so that the output is in the correct order with only forward and
  half forward line feeds, and replaces white-space characters with tabs where
  possible.
The col utility reads from the standard
    input and writes to the standard output.
The options are as follows:
-b-f-h-l
    num-pcol will filter out any control sequences from the
      input other than those recognized and interpreted by itself, which are
      listed below.-xIn the input stream, col understands both
    the escape sequences of the form escape-digit mandated by
    Version 2 of the Single UNIX Specification
    (“SUSv2”) and the traditional
    BSD format escape-control-character. The control
    sequences for carriage motion and their ASCII values are as follows:
-f
      mode, this sequence may also occur in the output stream.All unrecognized control characters and escape sequences are discarded.
The col utility keeps track of the
    character set as characters are read and makes sure the character set is
    correct when they are output.
If the input attempts to back up to the last flushed line,
    col will display a warning message.
LANG, LC_ALL and
  LC_CTYPE environment variables affect the execution of
  col as described in
  environ(7).
col utility exits 0 on success,
  and >0 if an error occurs.
col to filter the output of
  man(1) and remove the backspace
  characters ( ^H ) before searching for some text:
man ls | col -b | grep HISTORY
col utility conforms to
  Version 2 of the Single UNIX Specification
  (“SUSv2”).
col command appeared in
  Version 6 AT&T UNIX.
| November 1, 2020 | NetBSD 10.1 |