column

src: 6 More Unique Linux Utilities You Forgot About | by Tate Galbraith | Better Programming

This is another super useful formatting utility. The column utility helps you create columns in text output and even generate whole tables, all from the command-line.

There are other ways to achieve the same thing using utilities like awk but the column utility is geared towards this specific use so that makes it incredibly simple to use, and remember the syntax for.

If we wanted to build a simple table based on a few lines of input, we could execute the following command:

echo -e "one two three\n1 2 3\n111111 222222 333322" | column -t

The output of this command should look like this:

one     two     three  
1       2       3  
111111  222222  333322

As you can see, the output is automatically formatted into neatly aligned columns. This forms a little table in the output and will automatically resize based on the length of each input line.

If you’re working with slightly longer sets of unstructured data on the command-line and you want to quickly bring some tabular order, this utility is a life saver.

The man page for column has more usage details and unique ways to wrangle different inputs.