lpr Print Files Berkeley Style from the Linux command line by OnWorks

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lpr – Print Files (Berkeley Style)

The lpr program can be used to send files to the printer. It may also be used in pipelines, as it accepts standard input. For example, to print the results of our multicolumn directory listing above, we could do this:

[me@linuxbox ~]$ ls /usr/bin | pr -3 | lpr

and the report would be sent to the system’s default printer. To send the file to a different printer, the -P option can be used like this:

lpr -P printer_name

where printer_name is the name of the desired printer. To see a list of printers known to the system:

[me@linuxbox ~]$ lpstat -a

Tip: Many Linux distributions allow you to define a “printer” that outputs files in PDF (Portable Document Format), rather than printing on the physical printer. This is very handy for experimenting with printing commands. Check your printer con- figuration program to see if it supports this configuration. On some distributions, you may need to install additional packages (such as cups-pdf) to enable this ca- pability.

Here are some of the common options for lpr:

Table 22-2: Common lpr Options

Option Description

-# number Set number of copies to number.

-p Print each page with a shaded header with the date, time, job name, and page number. This so-called “pretty print” option can be used when printing text files.