FMT(1)

📦 version 1.053, in alpine 3.24

💅 FMT(1) — simple text formatter 💅

okay bestie, welcome to the FMT(1) manual page from the User Contributed Perl Documentation collection. Pull up a chair, we’re formatting paragraphs. 🎀

🌸 NAME 🌸

fmt — simple text formatter. That’s literally it, and she’s iconic for it. ✨

🦋 SYNOPSIS 🦋

fmt [-w WIDTH] [file...]

Short, sweet, and ready to serve. 💅

💖 DESCRIPTION 💖

So picture this: fmt takes paragraphs of text from the input files — or from standard input if you didn’t hand it any files — and reformats those paragraphs, then writes the glow-up to standard output. No cap. 💜

The option -WIDTH is an abbreviated form of -w DIGITS. Yep, that’s the whole vibe. 🫶

✨ OPTIONS ✨

  • -w DIGITS — maximum line width, bestie. This option can be specified in the shortened version, -DIGITS. The default is 75. 🎀

💀 EXIT STATUS 💀

The fmt utility exits 0 on success, and >0 to indicate an error. Slay when it’s 0; side-eye when it’s >0. 😭

🙈 BUGS 🙈

Only ASCII text is handled correctly. So if your text is serving multilingual chaos, fmt is lowkey not the one for that. Periodt. 💅

👑 AUTHORS 👑

Dmitri Tikhonov — yes, the author. She said respect the name. 👑

This code is freely modifiable and freely redistributable under Perl’s Artistic License. So go off, remix it, share it, and respect the license. 🫶

🦋 That’s the whole FMT(1) manual, bestie — footer tea: perl v5.42.2, dated 2026-02-15. Now go format those paragraphs and absolutely ate. 💅✨
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