FMT(1)                     OpenBSD Reference Manual                     FMT(1)

NAME
     fmt - simple text formatter

SYNOPSIS
     fmt [-cmnps] [-d chars] [-l number] [-t number]
         [goal [maximum] | -width | -w width] [file ...]

DESCRIPTION
     fmt is a simple text formatter which reads the concatenation of input
     files (or standard input if none are given) and produces on standard out-
     put a version of its input with lines as close to the goal length as pos-
     sible without exceeding the maximum.  The goal length defaults to 65 and
     the maximum to 10 more than the goal length.

     Alternatively, a single width parameter can be specified either by
     prepending a hyphen to it or by using -w.  For example, ``fmt -w 72'',
     ``fmt -72'', and ``fmt 72 72'' all produce identical output.  The spacing
     at the beginning of the input lines is preserved in the output, as are
     blank lines and interword spacing.  Lines are joined or split only at
     white space; that is, words are never joined or hyphenated.

     The options are as follows:

     -c      Center the text, line by line.  In this case, most of the other
             options are ignored; no splitting or joining of lines is done.

     -d chars
             Treat chars (and no others) as sentence-ending characters.  By
             default the sentence-ending characters are full stop (`.'), ques-
             tion mark (`?'), and exclamation mark (`!').  Remember that some
             characters may need to be escaped to protect them from the shell.

     -l number
             Replace multiple spaces with tabs at the start of each output
             line, if possible.  number spaces will be replaced with one tab.

     -m      Try to format mail header lines contained in the input sensibly.

     -n      Format lines beginning with a `.' (dot) character.  Normally, fmt
             does not fill these lines, for compatibility with troff(1) and
             nroff(1).

     -p      Allow indented paragraphs.  Without the -p flag, any change in
             the amount of whitespace at the start of a line results in a new
             paragraph being begun.

     -s      Collapse whitespace inside lines, so that multiple whitespace
             characters are turned into a single space (or, at the end of a
             sentence, a double space).

     -t number
             Assume that the input files' tabs assume number spaces per tab
             stop.  The default is 8.

     fmt is meant to format mail messages prior to sending, but may also be
     useful for other simple tasks.  For instance, within an editor such as
     vi(1), the following command will reformat a paragraph, evening the
     lines:

           !}fmt

SEE ALSO
     indent(1), mail(1), nroff(1), vi(1)

HISTORY
     The fmt command appeared in 3BSD.

     The version described herein is a complete rewrite and appeared in
     OpenBSD 2.4.

AUTHORS
     Kurt Shoens
     Liz Allen (added goal length concept)
     Gareth McCaughan (wrote this version)

BUGS
     The program was designed to be simple and fast - for more complex opera-
     tions, the standard text processors are likely to be more appropriate.

     When the first line of an indented paragraph is very long (more than
     about twice the goal length), the indentation in the output can be wrong.

     fmt is not infallible in guessing what lines are mail headers and what
     lines are not.

OpenBSD 4.7                      May 31, 2007                                2
