Otdfbt

I have a long file with short lines (one word) f that I would like to inspect.
It would fit on the screen if it wasn't for the newlines.

If the data was already arranged in columns I could just do column -t but I want my one column to be split into many.

Knowing the length of the file I could just do:

$ sed -n '1,10p' f > f1
$ sed -n '11,20p' f > f2
$ sed -n '21,30p' f > f3
$ sed -n '31,40p' f > f4
$ sed -n '41,50p' f > f5
$ paste f[1-5]

I imagine one could also make a new directory, apply touch on every line, do ls, delete the directory.

But is there an easy way to do this without creating any files?

Oh, nevermind! column does that:

column f displays newline separated items in file f in columns, which has the same effect as ls on a directory.

Alternatively, there's the fmt utility (check your local man page):

$ seq 100 > f
$ fmt --width 50 file
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18
19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34
35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50
51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66
67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82
83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98
99 100

or pr:

$ pr -15 -w 50 -a -s' ' -t file
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30
31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45
46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60
61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75
76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90
91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 10

With zsh:

$ seq 20 > file
$ print -rC5 -- $(f)"$(<file)"
1 5 9 13 17
2 6 10 14 18
3 7 11 15 19
4 8 12 16 20
$ print -raC5 -- $(f)"$(<file)"
1 2 3 4 5
6 7 8 9 10
11 12 13 14 15
16 17 18 19 20