Printing files

Before we get into printing, I highly recommend reading a little on printing history in The Linux Command Line.

I rarely have a printer connected, it is often convenient to store the output to a PDF to be sent to a printer later. On Linux, you might want to install cups-pdf to print to PDF while practicing instead of wasting the precious printer papers.

pr

Prepares text files for printing.

  ls -1 | pr -4 -t 

The first part of this pipeline lists the files in one columns. The pr command then rearranges them to 4 columns. With the -t option, the headers and footers are not displayed.

lpr

  ls -1 | pr -4 -t -o 1 | lpr

The output is under ~/PDF/.

lp

With characters per inch (CPI) and lines per inch (LPI), this command is provides more functionality

  ls -1 | pr -4 -t -o 1 | lp -o page-left=34 -o cpi=20

gs

For graphical printers (like those using PostScript), you can use a2ps (anything to PostScript)

ls /usr/bin | pr -3 -t | a2ps -o ~/Desktop/ls.ps -L 66