.Dd December 8, 2014
.Dt COLS 1
.Os
.Sh NAME
.Nm cols
.Nd columnize output
.Sh SYNOPSIS
.Nm
.Op Fl c Ar chars
.Op Ar file ...
.Sh DESCRIPTION
.Nm
reads each file in sequence and writes them to stdout,
in as many vertical columns as will fit in
.Ar chars
character columns.
If no file is given, cols reads from stdin.
.Sh OPTIONS
.Bl -tag -width xxxxxxxx
.It Fl c Ar chars
Specifies the maximum number of character columns to use
(unless the input contains lines longer than
.Ar chars
characters).  By default cols tries to figure out the width
of the output device, if that fails it defaults to 65
chars.
.El
.Sh BUGS
This implementation of
.Nm
assumes that each UTF-8 code point occupies one character cell,
and thus mishandles TAB characters (among others).
.Pp
.Nm
currently mangles files which contain embedded NULs.
.Sh HISTORY
.Nm
is similar to the mc(1) command on Plan 9.  It was renamed to
.Nm
to avoid the name collision with the popular file manager
Midnight Commander.