fmt(1) BSD General Commands Manual fmt(1)
NAME
fmt -- simple text formatter
SYNOPSIS
fmt [-cmnps] [-d chars] [-l num] [-t num]
[goal [maximum] | -width | -w width] [file ...]
DESCRIPTION
The fmt utility is a simple text formatter which reads the concatenation
of input files (or standard input if none are given) and produces on
standard output a version of its input with lines as close to the goal
length as possible without exceeding the maximum. The goal length
defaults to 65 and the maximum to 10 more than the goal length. Alterna-
tively, a single width parameter can be specified either by prepending a
hyphen to it or by using -w. For example, ``fmt -w 72'', ``fmt -72'',
and ``fmt 72 72'' all produce identical output. The spacing at the
beginning of the input lines is preserved in the output, as are blank
lines and interword spacing. Lines are joined or split only at white
space; that is, words are never joined or hyphenated.
The options are as follows:
-c Center the text, line by line. In this case, most of the other
options are ignored; no splitting or joining of lines is done.
-m Try to format mail header lines contained in the input sensibly.
-n Format lines beginning with a `.' (dot) character. Normally, fmt
does not fill these lines, for compatibility with nroff(1).
-p Allow indented paragraphs. Without the -p flag, any change in
the amount of whitespace at the start of a line results in a new
paragraph being begun.
-s Collapse whitespace inside lines, so that multiple whitespace
characters are turned into a single space. (Or, at the end of a
sentence, a double space.)
-d chars
Treat the chars (and no others) as sentence-ending characters.
By default the sentence-ending characters are full stop (`.'),
question mark (`?') and exclamation mark (`!'). Remember that
some characters may need to be escaped to protect them from your
shell.
-l number
Replace multiple spaces with tabs at the start of each output
line, if possible. Each number spaces will be replaced with one
tab. The default is 8. If number is 0, spaces are preserved.
-t number
Assume that the input files' tabs assume number spaces per tab
stop. The default is 8.
The fmt utility is meant to format mail messages prior to sending, but
may also be useful for other simple tasks. For instance, within visual
mode of the ex(1) editor (e.g., vi(1)) the command
!}fmt
will reformat a paragraph, evening the lines.
ENVIRONMENT
The LANG, LC_ALL and LC_CTYPE environment variables affect the execution
of fmt as described in environ(7).
SEE ALSO
fold(1), mail(1), nroff(1)
HISTORY
The fmt command appeared in 3BSD.
The version described herein is a complete rewrite and appeared in
FreeBSD 4.4.
AUTHORS
Kurt Shoens
Liz Allen (added goal length concept)
Gareth McCaughan
BUGS
The program was designed to be simple and fast - for more complex opera-
tions, the standard text processors are likely to be more appropriate.
When the first line of an indented paragraph is very long (more than
about twice the goal length), the indentation in the output can be wrong.
The fmt utility is not infallible in guessing what lines are mail headers
and what lines are not.
BSD August 2, 2004 BSD
Mac OS X 10.6 - Generated Thu Sep 17 20:07:39 CDT 2009