FMT(1)

📦
version 9.12 · 28 versions
, in arch rolling

💖 FMT(1) 💖

okay so bestie, welcome to fmt — she's literally the simple optimal text formatter and she's about to make your paragraphs look ✨immaculate✨. no cap.

🌸 NAME 🌸

fmt — simple optimal text formatter 🎀

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

fmt [-WIDTH] [OPTION]... [FILE]...

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

So what she does is: she reformats each paragraph in the FILE(s) and writes it all out to standard output. glow up for your text, fr fr. 💅

Little shortcut moment: the option -WIDTH is just an abbreviated form of --width=DIGITS. iykyk.

If you give her no FILE at all, or if FILE is literally just -, she reads from standard input instead. shy but flexible 💜

⚠️ bestie pls remember: mandatory arguments to long options are also mandatory for the short options. no skipping, she will not let you.

👑 OPTIONS 👑

  • -c, --crown-margin — preserves the indentation of the first two lines. crown stays on, queen behavior 👑
  • -p, --prefix=STRING — only reformats the lines that begin with STRING, and then reattaches that prefix onto the reformatted lines. selective formatting, she's got taste ✨
  • -s, --split-only — splits the long lines but does not refill them. just a little trim, no full makeover 💇
  • -t, --tagged-paragraph — indentation of the first line is different from the second. tagged, not bagged 🏷️
  • -u, --uniform-spacing — one space between words, two after sentences. uniform, consistent, organized, we love a tidy queen 🎀
  • -w, --width=WIDTH — maximum line width, with a default of 75 columns. this is the ceiling, babe 📏
  • -g, --goal=WIDTH — goal width, defaulting to 93% of width. a soft little target, aspirational 💫
  • --help — displays this help and exits. when u need the tea 🍵
  • --version — outputs version information and exits. identity check 🪪

🌈 AUTHOR 🌈

Written by Ross Paterson. king behavior, we stan 🫶

😭 REPORTING BUGS 😭

Found a bug? don't just suffer in silence bestie, tell the people:

Copyright © 2026 Free Software Foundation, Inc. License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <https://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>.

This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it. There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law. (yes that's all caps in the original, she's serious about this one 💀)

⭐ SEE ALSO ⭐

and that's the whole vibe, bestie 💖 go forth and format. this was GNU coreutils 9.12, from September 2026 — slay, periodt ✨🎀🦋

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