paste: What I thought join would be

I just showed paste in the last post but I haven’t mentioned it on this site. I probably should have reversed the order here, since paste is one of the last coreutils toys I was holding back from the leftover slurry.

paste does what I thought join should do — concatenate two separate data files, line by line. Again, this is something easier done than said:

That looks almost identical to what join does; here’s where they differ:

paste at least hints that there were omissions in one column or the other. join, on the other hand, skipped over those items, and demanded they be sorted.

Of course, seeing paste and join side-by-side makes a lot more sense in why they’re named as they are. join links together corresponding entries according to a sorted order. paste just forces them together, even when something is missing.

I’d still like to see paste insert a tab where the first list is missing a line, but at least now I get the picture.

I handed datamash a small gold star for transposing its output, and paste has a similar function in its -s flag.

So you can run out vertical lists horizontally, if you are so inclined.

I’m quickly running out of coreutils titles, and I do so enjoy learning about them. Perhaps one day I shall start a blog that only steps through that and the util-linux package, and looks at each tool one at a time. … Nah, who’s got time for that? 😕