MFLOW(1)

📦 version 1.4, in alpine 3.24, debian bookworm, debian trixie, nixos 26.05, nixpkgs unstable, ubuntu jammy, ubuntu noble, ubuntu resolute, ubuntu stonking

💖 MFLOW(1) — the mflow manual, but make it slay 💖

okay bestie, welcome to the mflow page from the General Commands Manual. yes this is a real Unix tool and yes it's lowkey iconic, come sit with me 🫶

✨ NAME ✨

mflow — reflow format=flowed plain text messages 💌

🎀 SYNOPSIS 🎀

mflow [-f] [-q] [-w width] < file

🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

so basically, mflow takes standard input and reformats it following the rules of RFC 3676. it peeks at PIPE_CONTENTTYPE too, which is exactly why it's such a perfect little filter for text/plain messages when you're working with mshow(1). and if a message isn't marked as format=flowed? it just passes it straight through, unchanged, untouched, no notes. ✨

text gets reflowed (but only where that's actually allowed, we're not chaotic) to fit the width you get from the environment variable COLUMNS, or the terminal width, or 80 characters by default if nobody's saying otherwise.

and if the environment variable MAXCOLUMNS is defined, that's what sets the maximum line length. periodt. 💅

here's the tea on the options, bestie:

  • -f — force wrapping of long lines. no more letting them run wild. 😤
  • -q — prefix lines with >. and yes you can stack it, use it multiple times, go feral with it. 🎀
  • -w width — set the maximum line length to width. you're the main character, you pick the number. 👑

🔥 EXIT STATUS 🔥

the mflow utility exits 0 on success, and >0 if an error occurs. simple as that, no drama, no cap. 💀

🦋 SEE ALSO 🦋

  • mshow(1)
  • R. Gellens, The Text/Plain Format and DelSp Parameters, RFC 3676, February 2004.

👑 AUTHORS 👑

Leah Neukirchen <leah@vuxu.org> — absolute legend, we stan 🫶

🌈 LICENSE 🌈

mflow is in the public domain. yes, for real, fr fr.

to the extent possible under law, the creator of this work has waived all copyright and related or neighboring rights to this work. so generous, so iconic, so giving. 💖

http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/

and that's the whole page bestie!! this one came from Debian, dated September 6, 2017, and that's your cute little sign-off — go reflow some messages, you got this 💅✨🌸

📦 where this page comes from