FMT(1) BSD Reference Manual FMT(1)NAMEfmt - simple text formatter
SYNOPSISfmt [-cmnps] [-d chars] [-l num] [-t num]
[goal [maximum] | -width | -w width] [file ...]
DESCRIPTIONfmt is a simple text formatter which reads the concatenation of input
files (or standard input if none are given) and produces on standard out-
put a version of its input with lines as close to the goal length as pos-
sible 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 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 troff(1) and
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 ('.'), ques-
tion 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. number spaces will be replaced with one tab.
-t number
Assume that the input files' tabs assume number spaces per tab
stop. The default is 8.
fmt 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.
SEE ALSOmail(1), nroff(1), troff(1)HISTORY
The fmt command appeared in 3BSD.
The version described herein is a complete rewrite and appeared in
OpenBSD 2.4.
AUTHORS
Kurt Shoens
Liz Allen (added goal length concept)
Gareth McCaughan (wrote this version)
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.
fmt is not infallible in guessing what lines are mail headers and what
lines are not.
MirOS BSD #10-current June 6, 1993 1
