#! /usr/bin/gawk -f

BEGIN{
  # Reads a bunch of lines, prints them columnwise.
  # Can be used only for iso-latin-1 or ascii files.
  split("", a)
  nrows=0
  ncols=0
}
// { 
  nrows++; a[nrows] = $0; 
  nc = length($0)
  if (nc > ncols) { ncols = nc; }
  next;
}
END {
  for (c = 1; c <= ncols; c++) {
    for (r = 1; r <= nrows; r++) {
      wd = a[r];
      ch = ( c > length(wd) ?  " " : substr(a[r], c, 1))
      printf "%s", ch;
    }
    printf "\n"
  }
}