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Annotation of src/usr.bin/fmt/fmt.1, Revision 1.28

1.28    ! schwarze    1: .\" $OpenBSD: fmt.1,v 1.27 2015/09/11 19:20:18 schwarze Exp $
1.1       deraadt     2: .\"
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                     30: .\"     @(#)fmt.1      8.1 (Berkeley) 6/6/93
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1.28    ! schwarze   32: .Dd $Mdocdate: September 11 2015 $
1.1       deraadt    33: .Dt FMT 1
                     34: .Os
                     35: .Sh NAME
                     36: .Nm fmt
                     37: .Nd simple text formatter
                     38: .Sh SYNOPSIS
1.6       aaron      39: .Nm fmt
1.15      millert    40: .Op Fl cmnps
1.4       millert    41: .Op Fl d Ar chars
1.18      jmc        42: .Op Fl l Ar number
                     43: .Op Fl t Ar number
1.27      schwarze   44: .Op Ar goal Oo Ar maximum Oc | Fl Ar width | Fl w Ar width
1.18      jmc        45: .Op Ar
1.1       deraadt    46: .Sh DESCRIPTION
1.7       aaron      47: .Nm
1.1       deraadt    48: is a simple text formatter which reads the concatenation of input
                     49: files (or standard input if none are given) and produces on standard
                     50: output a version of its input with lines as close to the
                     51: .Ar goal
                     52: length
1.4       millert    53: as possible without exceeding the
1.5       aaron      54: .Ar maximum .
1.4       millert    55: The
1.1       deraadt    56: .Ar goal
                     57: length defaults
1.4       millert    58: to 65 and the
                     59: .Ar maximum
1.14      millert    60: to 10 more than the
                     61: .Ar goal
                     62: length.
1.19      jmc        63: .Pp
1.10      pjanzen    64: Alternatively, a single
                     65: .Ar width
                     66: parameter can be specified either by prepending a hyphen to it or by using
                     67: .Fl w .
                     68: For example,
1.19      jmc        69: .Dq fmt -w 72 ,
                     70: .Dq fmt -72 ,
1.10      pjanzen    71: and
1.19      jmc        72: .Dq fmt 72 72
1.10      pjanzen    73: all produce identical output.
1.9       aaron      74: The spacing at the beginning of the input lines is preserved in the output,
                     75: as are blank lines and interword spacing.
1.10      pjanzen    76: Lines are joined or split only at white space; that is, words are never
                     77: joined or hyphenated.
1.3       millert    78: .Pp
1.8       aaron      79: The options are as follows:
1.11      aaron      80: .Bl -tag -width Ds
1.4       millert    81: .It Fl c
1.9       aaron      82: Center the text, line by line.
                     83: In this case, most of the other
1.4       millert    84: options are ignored; no splitting or joining of lines is done.
1.18      jmc        85: .It Fl d Ar chars
1.19      jmc        86: Treat
1.18      jmc        87: .Ar chars
                     88: (and no others) as sentence-ending characters.
                     89: By default the
                     90: sentence-ending characters are full stop
                     91: .Pq Ql \&. ,
                     92: question mark
1.19      jmc        93: .Pq Ql \&? ,
1.18      jmc        94: and exclamation mark
                     95: .Pq Ql \&! .
                     96: Remember that some characters may need to be
1.19      jmc        97: escaped to protect them from the shell.
1.18      jmc        98: .It Fl l Ar number
                     99: Replace multiple spaces with tabs at the start of each output
                    100: line, if possible.
                    101: .Ar number
                    102: spaces will be replaced with one tab.
1.4       millert   103: .It Fl m
                    104: Try to format mail header lines contained in the input sensibly.
1.15      millert   105: .It Fl n
                    106: Format lines beginning with a
                    107: .Ql \&.
                    108: (dot) character.
                    109: Normally,
                    110: .Nm
1.22      jmc       111: does not fill these lines,
                    112: for compatibility with troff and nroff.
1.4       millert   113: .It Fl p
1.9       aaron     114: Allow indented paragraphs.
                    115: Without the
1.4       millert   116: .Fl p
                    117: flag, any change in the amount of whitespace at the start of a line
                    118: results in a new paragraph being begun.
                    119: .It Fl s
                    120: Collapse whitespace inside lines, so that multiple whitespace
1.19      jmc       121: characters are turned into a single space
                    122: (or, at the end of a
                    123: sentence, a double space).
1.4       millert   124: .It Fl t Ar number
                    125: Assume that the input files' tabs assume
                    126: .Ar number
1.9       aaron     127: spaces per tab stop.
                    128: The default is 8.
1.4       millert   129: .El
1.1       deraadt   130: .Pp
1.7       aaron     131: .Nm
1.1       deraadt   132: is meant to format mail messages prior to sending, but may also be useful
                    133: for other simple tasks.
                    134: For instance,
1.20      jmc       135: within an editor such as
                    136: .Xr vi 1 ,
                    137: the following command
                    138: will reformat a paragraph,
                    139: evening the lines:
1.1       deraadt   140: .Pp
1.20      jmc       141: .Dl !}fmt
1.28    ! schwarze  142: .Sh ENVIRONMENT
        !           143: .Bl -tag -width LC_CTYPE
        !           144: .It Ev LC_CTYPE
        !           145: The character set
        !           146: .Xr locale 1 .
        !           147: It is used to decide which byte sequences form characters and what
        !           148: their display width is.
        !           149: If it is unset or set to
        !           150: .Qq C ,
        !           151: .Qq POSIX,
        !           152: or an unsupported value, each byte except the tab is assumed
        !           153: to represent a character of display width 1.
        !           154: .El
1.23      schwarze  155: .Sh EXIT STATUS
                    156: .Ex -std
                    157: The latter happens with invalid options, insufficient memory,
                    158: or when an input file is not found or not readable.
1.25      jmc       159: The >0 exit value is the sum of all errors up to a maximum of 127;
1.24      lum       160: more errors may occur but the counter will only increment to this number.
1.1       deraadt   161: .Sh SEE ALSO
1.20      jmc       162: .Xr indent 1 ,
1.4       millert   163: .Xr mail 1 ,
1.20      jmc       164: .Xr vi 1
1.1       deraadt   165: .Sh HISTORY
1.14      millert   166: The
1.4       millert   167: .Nm
1.23      schwarze  168: command first appeared in
                    169: .Bx 2 .
1.4       millert   170: .Pp
                    171: The version described herein is a complete rewrite and appeared in
1.9       aaron     172: .Ox 2.4 .
1.14      millert   173: .Sh AUTHORS
                    174: .An Kurt Shoens
1.23      schwarze  175: (July 1978)
1.14      millert   176: .An Liz Allen
                    177: (added goal length concept)
                    178: .An Gareth McCaughan
                    179: (wrote this version)
1.1       deraadt   180: .Sh BUGS
1.19      jmc       181: The program was designed to be simple and fast \(en for more complex
1.1       deraadt   182: operations, the standard text processors are likely to be more appropriate.
1.4       millert   183: .Pp
                    184: When the first line of an indented paragraph is very long (more than
                    185: about twice the goal length), the indentation in the output can be
                    186: wrong.
                    187: .Pp
                    188: .Nm
                    189: is not infallible in guessing what lines are mail headers and what
                    190: lines are not.