.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
.IR ms (6)
or
.IR man (6)
and for 
.IR 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 SEE ALSO
.IR 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.