| column | [ -tx] [-ccolumns] [-ssep] [file ...] | 
The column utility formats its input into multiple
  columns. Rows are filled before columns. Input is taken from
  file operands, or, by default, from the standard input.
  Empty lines are ignored.
The options are as follows:
  - -c
- Output is formatted for a display columns wide.
- -s
- Specify a set of characters to be used to delimit columns for the
      -toption.
- -t
- Determine the number of columns the input contains and create a table.
      Columns are delimited with whitespace, by default, or with the characters
      supplied using the -soption. Useful for
      pretty-printing displays.
- -x
- Fill columns before filling rows.
  - COLUMNS
- The environment variable COLUMNSis used to
      determine the size of the screen if no other information is
    available.
Thecolumn utility exits 0 on success,
  and >0 if an error occurs.
(echo "PERM LINKS OWNER GROUP
  SIZE MONTH DAY HH:MM/YEAR NAME"; \
ls -l | sed 1d) | column
  -t
The column command appeared in
  4.3BSD-Reno.