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. Alternatively, 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 split-ting splitting
ting 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 sin-gle single
gle 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 operations, the standard text proces-sors processors
sors 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
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