paste - Man Page

• Join all the lines into a single line, using TAB as delimiter: paste [-s|--serial] path/to/file
• Join all the lines into a single line, using the specified delimiter: paste [-s|--serial] [-d|--delimiters] delimiter path/to/file
• Merge two files side by side, each in its column, using TAB as delimiter: paste path/to/file1 path/to/file2
• Merge two files side by side, each in its column, using the specified delimiter: paste [-d|--delimiters] delimiter path/to/file1 path/to/file2
• Merge two files, with lines added alternatively: paste [-d|--delimiters] '\n' path/to/file1 path/to/file2

tldr.sh

paste [OPTION]... [FILE]...

Write lines consisting of the sequentially corresponding lines from each FILE, separated by TABs, to standard output. The newline of every line except the line from the last file is replaced with a TAB.

With no FILE, or when FILE is -, read standard input.

Mandatory arguments to long options are mandatory for short options too.

-d,  --delimiters=LIST

reuse characters from LIST instead of TABs; backslash escapes are supported

-s,  --serial

paste one file at a time instead of in parallel; the newline of every line except the last line in each file is replaced with a TAB

-z,  --zero-terminated

line delimiter is NUL, not newline

--help

display this help and exit

--version

output version information and exit

Written by David M. Ihnat and David MacKenzie.

Report bugs to: bug-coreutils@gnu.org
GNU coreutils home page: <https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/>
General help using GNU software: <https://www.gnu.org/gethelp/>
Report any translation bugs to <https://translationproject.org/team/>

Copyright © 2026 Free Software Foundation, Inc. License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <https://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>.
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it. There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.

Full documentation <https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/paste>
or available locally via: info '(coreutils) paste invocation'

colrm(1), column(1), ksh93(1), wl-clipboard(1).