ref: d54bc38234b9ee339dc91b6d0c1d7bec27c4928f
dir: /sys/man/1/col/
.TH COL 1 .SH NAME col \- column alignment .SH SYNOPSIS .B col [ .B -bfx ] .SH DESCRIPTION .I Col overlays lines to expunge reverse line feeds (ESC-7) and half line feeds (ESC-9 and ESC-8) as produced by .I nroff for .2C in .IR ms (6) or .IR man (6) and for .IR tbl (1). .I Col is a pure filter. It normally emits only full line feeds; option .B -f (fine) allows half line feeds too. Option .B -b removes backspaces, printing just one of each pile of overstruck characters. .I Col normally converts white space to tabs; option .B -x overrides this feature. Other escaped characters and non-printing characters are ignored. .SH EXAMPLES .TP .L tbl file | nroff -ms | col | p Format some tables for printing on typewriters; use .I col to remove reverse line feeds, and paginate the output. .SH SEE ALSO .IR pr (1) .SH BUGS .I Col can't back up more than 128 lines or handle more than 800 characters per line, and understands .L VT (013) as reverse line feed.