SYNOPSIS
fmt
[-cs]
[-w
width]
[file...]
DESCRIPTION
The
fmt
command 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
file
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 period
(.),
for compatibility with
nroff.
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;
the
vi
command:
reformats the text between the cursor location and the end of
the paragraph.
Options
fmt
recognizes the following options:
- -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
Fill output lines to up to
width
columns.
WARNINGS
The
-w
width
option is acceptable for BSD
compatibility, but it may go away in future releases.
Printable version
