FMT(1) BSD General Commands Manual FMT(1)NAMEfmt — simple text formatter
SYNOPSISfmt [-Cr] [goal [maximum]] [name ...]
fmt [-Cr] [-g goal] [-m maximum] [name ...]
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 75. The spacing at the beginning of the input lines is
preserved in the output, as are blank lines and interword spacing. In
non raw mode, lines that look like mail headers or begin with a period
are not formatted.
-C instructs fmt to center the text.
-g goal New way to set the goal length.
-m maximum New way to set the maximum length.
-r Raw mode; formats all lines and does not make exceptions for
lines that start with a period or look like mail headers.
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)HISTORY
The fmt command appeared in 3BSD.
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.
BSD May 29, 2007 BSD