.TH COLS 1 sbase\-VERSION
.SH NAME
cols \- columnize output
.SH SYNOPSIS
.B cols
.RB [ \-c
.IR chars ]
.RI [ file ...]
.SH DESCRIPTION
.B cols
reads each file in sequence and writes them to stdout,
in as many vertical columns as will fit in
.I chars
character columns.
If no file is given, cols reads from stdin.
.SH OPTIONS
.TP
.BI \-c " chars"
specifies the maximum number of character columns to use
(unless the input contains lines longer than
.I chars
characters).  By default cols tries to figure out the width
of the output device, if that fails it defaults to 65
chars.
.SH BUGS
This implementation of
.B cols
assumes that every byte is a character
which takes up one column on the screen.
It does not handle TAB characters correctly.
.B cols
currently mangles files which contain embedded NULs.
.B cols
does not allow the user to set a default width in its environment.