Manual page for fmt(1)
fmt - simple text formatters
SYNOPSIS
fmt
[
-c
] [
-s
]
[
-w width | -width
]
[
inputfile...
]
AVAILABILITY
SUNWcsu
DESCRIPTION
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.
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 width | -width
-
Fill output lines to up to
width
columns.
ENVIRONMENT
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.
SEE ALSO
nroff.1
vi.1
NOTES
The
-width
option is acceptable for
BSD
compatibility, but it may go away in future releases.
Created by unroff & hp-tools.
© by Hans-Peter Bischof. All Rights Reserved (1997).
Last modified 21/April/97
