DEROFF(1)

📦 version 0_git20260208, in alpine 3.24, arch rolling, nixos 26.05, nixpkgs unstable

💖 NAME 💖

deroff, delatex — remove formatting requests. This is the DEROFF(1) page from the General Commands Manual, bestie 🫶

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

deroff [ option ...  ] file ...

delatex file

🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

Okay so Deroff reads each file in sequence and removes all the nroff and troff(1) requests and non-text arguments, backslash constructions, and constructs from preprocessors like eqn(1), pic(1), and tbl(1). The remaining text goes straight to standard output. ✨

Deroff follows files included by and commands; if a file has already been included, a for that file is ignored and a terminates execution.

bestie, that sentence in the source has some missing command names — I’m keeping the gaps exactly as they are instead of making up names, no cap 🫶

If no input file is given, deroff reads from standard input.

The options are:

  • -w — Output a word list, one word (string of letters, digits, and properly embedded ampersands and apostrophes, beginning with a letter) per line. Other characters are skipped. Otherwise, the output follows the original, with the deletions mentioned above.
  • -_ — Like -w, but consider underscores to be alphanumeric rather than punctuation.
  • -i — Ignore and requests.
  • -ms — listed here with no extra description in this page; it’s just sitting there with mystery-flag energy 👀
  • -mm — Remove titles, attachments, etc., as well as ordinary troff constructs, from ms(7) or mm documents.
  • -ml — Same as -mm, but remove lists as well.

Delatex does for tex and latex (see tex(1)) files what deroff -wi does for troff files. Periodt 💅

🎀 SOURCE 🎀

The source files are:

/src/cmd/deroff.c
/src/cmd/delatex.lx

🦋 SEE ALSO 🦋

💀 BUGS 💀

These filters are not complete interpreters of troff or tex. For example, macro definitions containing cause chaos in deroff when the popular delimiters for eqn are in effect. 😭

Text inside macros is emitted at place of definition, not place of call.

This is a real caveat, bestie — don’t expect these filters to be full interpreters. 🫶

okay that’s the whole DEROFF(1) page from the General Commands Manual — the footer didn’t give a date, so no fake date energy here, bestie 🫶✨

📦 where this page comes from