1 .TH COL 1
2 .SH NAME
3 col \- column alignment
4 .SH SYNOPSIS
5 .B col
6 [
7 .B -bfx 
8 ]
9 .SH DESCRIPTION
10 .I Col
11 overlays lines to expunge reverse line feeds
12 (ESC-7)
13 and half line feeds (ESC-9 and ESC-8)
14 as produced by
15 .I nroff
16 for .2C in
17 .MR ms (7)
18 or
19 .MR man (7)
20 and for 
21 .MR tbl (1) .
22 .I Col
23 is a pure filter.
24 It normally emits only full line feeds;
25 option 
26 .B -f
27 (fine) allows half line feeds too.
28 Option 
29 .B -b
30 removes backspaces, printing just one of each pile of overstruck
31 characters.
32 .I Col
33 normally converts white space to tabs;
34 option
35 .B -x
36 overrides this feature.
37 Other escaped characters and non-printing characters are ignored.
38 .SH EXAMPLES
39 .TP
40 .L
41 tbl file | nroff -ms | col | p
42 Format some tables for printing on typewriters;
43 use
44 .I col
45 to remove reverse line feeds, and 
46 paginate the output.
47 .SH SOURCE
48 .B \*9/src/cmd/col.c
49 .SH SEE ALSO
50 .MR pr (1)
51 .SH BUGS
52 .I Col
53 can't back up more than 128 lines or
54 handle more than 800 characters per line,
55 and understands
56 .L VT
57 (013) as reverse line feed.