fmt(1)

💖 fmt(1) — the general commands manual page, but make it cute 💖

okay bestie, pull up a chair 🪑 because this one is genuinely one of my faves. it's fmt, from the General Commands Manual section of your friendly neighbourhood uutils coreutils — she reformats your messy little paragraphs and sends them straight to stdout. no drama, no chaos, just vibes. ✨

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🌸 NAME 🌸

fmt — Reformat paragraphs from input (or standard input) to stdout. 🎀

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🦋 SYNOPSIS 🦋

fmt [-c|--crown-margin] [-t|--tagged-paragraph] [-m|--preserve-headers]
[-s|--split-only] [-u|--uniform-spacing] [-p|--prefix]
[-P|--skip-prefix] [-x|--exact-prefix] [-X|--exact-skip-prefix]
[-w|--width] [-g|--goal] [-q|--quick] [-T|--tab-width] [-h|--help]
[-V|--version] [FILES]

like, that's the whole girl right there. take a sec. 👑

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🌈 DESCRIPTION 🌈

Reformat paragraphs from input (or standard input) to stdout. 💅

that's it. that's the job. she takes your paragraphs — from a file or from stdin — and rewrites them all pretty and reflowed into stdout. no cap.

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✨ OPTIONS ✨

so many flags, so little time. every single one of them, coming right up:

• -c, --crown-margin — the first and second line of a paragraph are allowed to have different indentations, and if they do, the first line's indentation gets preserved and every line after that matches the second line's indentation. crown-margin said "I contain multitudes" 👑
• -t, --tagged-paragraph — like -c, except the first and second line of a paragraph must have different indentation, or they get treated as separate paragraphs. she's strict like that. 🚨
• -m, --preserve-headers — she'll attempt to detect and preserve mail headers in the input. be careful when combining this flag with -p. ⚠️
• -s, --split-only — split lines only. do not reflow. simple, clean, minimal. 🧚
• -u, --uniform-spacing — insert exactly one space between words, and two between sentences. sentence breaks in the input get detected as [?!.] followed by two spaces or a newline; other punctuation is not interpreted as a sentence break. iykyk. 🔍
• -p, --prefix <PREFIX> — reformat only lines beginning with PREFIX, then reattach PREFIX to the reformatted lines. unless -x is specified, leading whitespace gets ignored when matching PREFIX. 🎀
• -P, --skip-prefix <PSKIP> — do not reformat lines beginning with PSKIP. unless -X is specified, leading whitespace gets ignored when matching PSKIP. 🙈
• -x, --exact-prefix — PREFIX must match at the beginning of the line with no preceding whitespace. exact girl, no negotiating. 💅
• -X, --exact-skip-prefix — PSKIP must match at the beginning of the line with no preceding whitespace. same energy, different flag. 💅
• -w, --width <WIDTH> — fill output lines up to a maximum of WIDTH columns, default 75. this can be specified as a negative number in the first argument. 📏
• -g, --goal <GOAL> — goal width, default of 93% of WIDTH. must be less than or equal to WIDTH. like, she has dreams but she stays realistic. ✨
• -q, --quick — break lines more quickly, at the expense of a potentially more ragged appearance. she's rushing, she's got places to be. 🏃‍♀️
• -T, --tab-width <TABWIDTH> — treat tabs as TABWIDTH spaces for determining line length, default 8. note that this is used only for calculating line lengths; tabs are preserved in the output. 🫶
• -h, --help — Print help. 🆘
• -V, --version — Print version. 🏷️
• [FILES] — the files, bestie. the actual things you want her to read. 📁

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🎀 VERSION 🎀

v(uutils coreutils) 0.7.0

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okay that's the whole page!! 🫶 you now know fmt better than most people know their own wifi password. go forth and reflow, bestie. 💖

reminder: every default, every detection rule, every "must" and "do not" up there is load-bearing. don't skip them, don't guess at them, just use them. 🔥

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and that's a wrap on this little fmt (uutils coreutils) 0.7.0 situation — uutils coreutils 0.7.0, babes, she's iconic and she's free 💜✨ slay, mwah, bye bestie 🎀🦋💖