The purpose of the paste command is to merge lines of files together. So for instance between file1 and file2, the default behavior is to paste the lines of the files side by side with a tab between them. file a: the quick brown fox jumped over the dirty, soggy log the cow jumped over the moon the dish ran away with the spoon that one guy put his wife in a pumpkin some kid's head got all big because he pulled a plum out of a pie file b: