REFORMAT(1)

📦
this version · 3 versions
, in ubuntu noble, ubuntu questing

✨ REFORMAT(1) ✨

okay bestie, gather round, because today we're talking about reformat — the little manual-page queen whose whole entire job is making plain ascii texts look cute. yes, the manual is literally called reformat. she's giving lowercase, she's giving 2004, she's giving actually useful. 💅

🌸 NAME 🌸

reformat — tool to simple format plain ascii texts

🎀 SYNOPSIS 🎀

reformat [-h] [-j] [-l margin] [-p] [-w width]

💖 DESCRIPTION 💖

reformat is a simple tool to reformat plain texts. she reads from stdin and writes to stdout. that's it. that's the whole vibe. no config files, no drama, no nothing. 🦋

Available options are:

  • -h — prints usage information. the classic "help me bestie" flag. 🙈
  • -j — switch justify mode: each line of a paragraph will have the same width (see -w option). to reach this, spaces (' ') will be added between words. default: disabled. so yeah, she'll stretch the lines out with extra spaces to make everything line up all nice and even. periodt.
  • -l left-margin — sets the left margin to left-margin. the margin is produced by left-margin spaces (' '), no tabs will be used. default: 0. no tabs, okay?? she said SPACES. respect it.
  • -p — accept lines beginning with a whitespace as usual paragraphs, too. lowkey changes how she reads your text, so pay attention. 👀
  • -w width — sets the paragraph width to width. no reformatted line will be longer than width (plus defined margins) then. default: 72. iconic number, honestly.

💀 LIMITATIONS 💀

okay so she's not perfect. nobody is. let's be real about it:

  • reformat isn't an intelligent program. it just reads a whole paragraph into a buffer and then reformats it. the end of a paragraph is indicated by an empty line (may also contain spaces or tabs) or at a line beginning with whitespaces (if you don't use -p option).

lines beginning with whitespaces are lines to keep untouched. nothing happens with them, unless you use -p option (as just mentioned). so hands off, she said. 🙅

  • reformat doesn't look for hyphenation and hyphens at all. it won't make new lines when reached a hyphen. reformat works word-by-word. she's not doing that whole hyphen-break thing. not her era. 😭
  • reformat doesn't detect 'small paragraphs' (paragraphs without an empty line). if you forgot the blank line, bestie, that's on you. 💀
  • Check for errors! if reformat detects a word with a length greater than the specified width, it will abort. like, full stop, she's out. 🚨
  • reformat has problems with control characters. some text documents contain the ^L character (0x0c), for example. yeah. messy. 🙈

👑 TODO 👑

planned features are:

  • Fix some problems, see "LIMITATIONS". (she's working on herself, okay? growth era. 🌱)
  • Add an option to declare a string that indicates "don't reformat" in the text. would be nice on reformatting emails, and don't touch the quoteas ('> '-lines). yes, "quoteas". she said what she said. 🫶
  • Add an option (e.g. -i) to keep indenting.

🌈 EXAMPLES 🌈

reformat < foo > bar

Reads text from foo, reformats and writes to bar. the starter pack, fr fr.

reformat -l 15 -j -w 50 < foo

Nice justified, centered text from file foo on an 80x25 terminal. look at her go. ✨

🦋 SEE ALSO 🦋

fold(1)

(C) Stephan Beyer <s-beyer@gmx.net>, 2003-2004, GPL

and that's the whole page, bestie! this iconic little manual is from reformat 20040319, dated 2024-02-17 — so yeah, she's been serving since before most of us could read, and she's still here. legacy behavior. 👑💖 go format something pretty. 🌸✨

📦 where this page comes from