JOT(1)

✨ JOT(1) ✨ — General Commands Manual energy 💖

okay so bestie, welcome to jot, she's giving general commands manual, she's iconic, she's been here since forever, and she's about to make your terminal do the absolute most 💅

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🌸 NAME 🌸

jot — print sequential or random data ✨

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🎀 SYNOPSIS 🎀

jot [ options ] [ reps [ begin [ end [ s ] ] ] ]

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💖 DESCRIPTION 💖

So like, jot prints out increasing, decreasing, random, or redundant data — usually numbers — one per line. That's the whole vibe. The options go a little something like this:

• -r — generate random data instead of sequential data. and yes, this is the default, she's just built different 🙈
• -b word — just print word over and over and over again. repetitive queen behavior 👑
• -w word — print word with the generated data appended to it. and here's the slay part: you can get octal, hexadecimal, exponential, ASCII, zero padded, and right-adjusted representations by using the appropriate printf(3) conversion specification inside word — in that case the data get inserted rather than appended. not me changing the whole placement situation 😭
• -c — this is literally just an abbreviation for -w %c. short king energy.
• -s string — print data separated by string. normally it's newlines doing the separating, fyi.
• -n — do not print the final newline that's normally appended to the output. no cap, that trailing newline is just gone.
• -p precision — print only as many digits or characters of the data as the integer precision says. if -p isn't there, the precision is the greater of the precisions of begin and end. but heads up: -p gets overridden by whatever appears in a printf(3) conversion following -w. she yields to the printf, periodt.

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The last four arguments are, respectively: the number of data (reps), the lower bound (begin), the upper bound (end), and the step size — or, when it's random data, the seed (s). While at least one of them has to show up, any of the other three may be omitted, and they'll be treated as omitted if you hand them over as -. Any three of these arguments determines the fourth. If all four are specified and the given and computed values of reps conflict, the lower value wins, sorry to the other one 💀. If fewer than three are specified, defaults get assigned left to right — except for s, which assumes its default unless both begin and end are given.

The defaults for the four arguments are, respectively, 100, 1, 100, and 1 — except that when random data are requested, s defaults to a seed depending on the time of day ⏰✨. Reps is expected to be an unsigned integer, and if you give it as zero it's taken to be infinite (yes, infinite, go off). Begin and end may be given as real numbers or as characters representing the corresponding value in ASCII. The last argument must be a real number, that's not optional bestie.

Random numbers are obtained through random(3). and fun fact: the name jot derives in part from iota, a function in APL 🦋 iykyk.

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🌈 EXAMPLES 🌈

The command

jot   21   -1   1.00

prints 21 evenly spaced numbers increasing from -1 to 1. chef's kiss 📈

The ASCII character set is generated with

jot   -c   128   0

and the strings xaa through xaz with

jot   -w   xa%c   26   a

while 20 random 8-letter strings are produced with

jot   -r   -c   160   a   z   |   rs   -g   0   8

Infinitely many yes's may be obtained through

jot   -b   yes   0

and thirty ed(1) substitution commands applying to lines 2, 7, 12, etc. is the result of

jot   -w   %ds/old/new/   30   2   -   5

The stuttering sequence 9, 9, 8, 8, 7, etc. can be produced by suitable choice of precision and step size, as in

jot   0   9   -   -.5

and a file containing exactly 1024 bytes is created with

jot   -b   x   512   >   block

Finally, to set tabs four spaces apart starting from column 10 and ending in column 132, use

expand   -`jot   -s,   -   10   132   4`

and to print all lines 80 characters or longer,

grep   `jot   -s   ""   -b   .   80`

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🫶 SEE ALSO 🫶

ed(1), expand(1), rs(1), yes(1), printf(3), random(3), expand(1)

(yes expand(1) is in there twice. she said it twice because she meant it twice 💜)

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and that's the whole page bestie!! this was the 4th Berkeley Distribution release, dated June 6, 1993 — vintage but still serving absolute looks, no notes, mwah 💋✨