Print two files in two columns side-by-side

I want to output two text files in two columns — one on the left side and other one on the right. paste doesn't solve the problem, because it only insert a character as delimiter, so if the first file has lines of different lengths output will be twisted: $ cat file1 looooooooong line line $ cat file2 hello world $ paste file1 file2 looooooooong line hello line world If there was a command to add trailing spaces like fmt --add-spaces --width 50 the problem would be solved(1): $ paste (1) **UPD:** command to add trailing spaces does exist, e. g.

-d '\n' printf '%-50s\n'

. But running `$ paste