.TH COL 1
.SH NAME
col \- column alignment
.SH SYNOPSIS
.B col
[
.B -bfx 
]
.SH DESCRIPTION
.I Col
overlays lines to expunge reverse line feeds
(ESC-7)
and half line feeds (ESC-9 and ESC-8)
as produced by
.I nroff
for .2C in
.MR ms 7
or
.MR man 7
and for 
.MR tbl 1 .
.I Col
is a pure filter.
It normally emits only full line feeds;
option 
.B -f
(fine) allows half line feeds too.
Option 
.B -b
removes backspaces, printing just one of each pile of overstruck
characters.
.I Col
normally converts white space to tabs;
option
.B -x
overrides this feature.
Other escaped characters and non-printing characters are ignored.
.SH EXAMPLES
.TP
.L
tbl file | nroff -ms | col | p
Format some tables for printing on typewriters;
use
.I col
to remove reverse line feeds, and 
paginate the output.
.SH SOURCE
.B \*9/src/cmd/col.c
.SH SEE ALSO
.MR pr 1
.SH BUGS
.I Col
can't back up more than 128 lines or
handle more than 800 characters per line,
and understands
.L VT
(013) as reverse line feed.