paste -sd

[Tong <mlist4suntong@yahoo.com>]

Hi,

Just noticed a wonderful usage of paste -s. However, I don't quite
understand how -d works. Specifically,

$ seq 10
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10

$ seq 10 | paste -sd " \n"
1 2
3 4
5 6
7 8
9 10

$ seq 10 | paste -sd "  \n"
1 2 3
4 5 6
7 8 9
10

$ seq 10 | paste -sd "   \n"
1 2 3 4
5 6 7 8
9 10

>From the man page:

       -d, --delimiters=LIST
              reuse characters from LIST instead of TABs

But I don't understand why more space in delimiter list would produce
different results. Please explain. 

thanks