There are many tools to format narrow lines into multiple columns, for example Plan 9 mc, BSD rs or column:
% utter foo{1..16} | 9 mc
foo1 foo3 foo5 foo7 foo9 foo11 foo13 foo15
foo2 foo4 foo6 foo8 foo10 foo12 foo14 foo16
% utter foo{1..16} | rs
foo1 foo3 foo5 foo7 foo9 foo11 foo13 foo15
foo2 foo4 foo6 foo8 foo10 foo12 foo14 foo16
% utter foo{1..16} | column
foo1 foo3 foo5 foo7 foo9 foo11 foo13 foo15
foo2 foo4 foo6 foo8 foo10 foo12 foo14 foo16
One problem with these tools is that a few long elements bloat the output:
% utter foo{1..5} foobarquuxmeh6 foo{7..16} | 9 mc
foo1 foo5 foo9 foo13
foo2 foobarquuxmeh6 foo10 foo14
foo3 foo7 foo11 foo15
foo4 foo8 foo12 foo16
My tool cmc is made for
formatting such lists:
% utter foo{1..5} foobarquuxmeh6 foo{7..16} | cmc
foo1 foo2 foo3 foo4 foo5 foobarquuxmeh6 foo7 foo8 foo9
foo10 foo11 foo12 foo13 foo14 foo15 foo16
Essentially, it aligns the contents into multiples of some column width, for example 6:
% ls / | cmc -t 6
afs altboot bin boot data dev dump etc home lib lib64
lost+found mnt opt proc root run sbin service srv sys tmp
usr var
This format can be a bit quirky, but it’s still easier to scan than a completely unformatted list, and it takes far less space than a strict column layout.
NP: Die Schnitter—Nichstdestotrotz