I have a testA.txt with contents as shown below[jiewmeng@JM textFiles]$ cat testA.txt The quickbrown foxjumped overthe lazy dog.paste normally works[jiewmeng@JM textFiles]$ paste testA.txt The quickbrown foxjumped overthe lazy dog.But what happened when I used serial? [jiewmeng@JM textFiles]$ paste -s testA.txt The quicdog.lazy er[jiewmeng@JM textFiles]$ paste -s -d- testA.txt -dog.lazy erI was expecting output similar to [jiewmeng@JM tmp]$ echo -en The quick\nbrown fox\njumped over\nthe lazy\ndog | paste -s -The quick   brown fox   jumped over the lazy    dogOpening the file in a test editor seems to work fine, just like cat, or paste did
Wierd output using paste with serial option
text processing;newlines;paste
Your file contains CR+LF line ending.  (You can say cat -vet inputfile to figure that.  Carriage returns would show up as ^M in the output.)The following demonstrates the effect of line endings on the output:$ cat test.txtThe quickbrown foxjumped overthe lazydog.$ paste -s test.txtThe quick       brown fox       jumped over     the lazy        dog.$ unix2dos test.txt$ paste -s test.txt        dog.lazy er