fmt(1) manual page
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fmt - simple text formatters
fmt [ -c ] [ -s ] [ -w width | -width
] [ inputfile... ]
SUNWcsu
fmt is a simple text
formatter that fills and joins lines to produce output lines of (up to)
the number of characters specified in the -w width option. The default width
is 72. fmt concatenates the inputfiles listed as arguments. If none are given,
fmt formats text from the standard input.
Blank lines are preserved in the
output, as is the spacing between words. fmt does not fill lines beginning
with a ‘.’ (dot), for compatibility with nroff(1)
. Nor does it fill lines
starting with ‘From:’.
Indentation is preserved in the output, and input lines
with differing indentation are not joined (unless -c is used).
fmt can also
be used as an in-line text filter for vi(1)
; the vi command:
- !}fmt
reformats
the text between the cursor location and the end of the paragraph.
- -c
- Crown margin mode. Preserve the indentation of the first two lines within
a paragraph, and align the left margin of each subsequent line with that
of the second line. This is useful for tagged paragraphs.
- -s
- Split lines only.
Do not join short lines to form longer ones. This prevents sample lines
of code, and other such formatted text, from being unduly combined.
- -w width
| -width
- Fill output lines to up to width columns.
If any of the
LC_*
variables ( LC_CTYPE, LC_MESSAGES, LC_TIME, LC_COLLATE, LC_NUMERIC,
and LC_MONETARY
) (see environ(5)
) are not set in the environment, the
operational behavior of fmt for each corresponding locale category is determined
by the value of the LANG
environment variable. If LC_ALL
is set, its
contents are used to override both the LANG
and the other LC_*
variables.
If none of the above variables is set in the environment, the "C" (U.S.
style) locale determines how fmt behaves.
- LC_CTYPE
- Determines how fmt handles
characters. When LC_CTYPE
is set to a valid value, fmt can display and
handle text and filenames containing valid characters for that locale. fmt
can display and handle Extended Unix Code (EUC) characters where any individual
character can be 1, 2, or 3 bytes wide. fmt can also handle EUC characters
of 1, 2, or more column widths. In the "C" locale, only characters from
ISO 8859-1 are valid.
nroff(1)
, vi(1)
The -width option is acceptable
for BSD
compatibility, but it may go away in future releases.
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