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| Chapter 2 UNIX Commands |

## fmt

    fmt [options] [files]

Fill and join text, producing lines of roughly the same length. (Unlike nroff, the lines are not justified.) fmt ignores blank lines and lines beginning with a dot (`.`) or with "From:". The emacs editor uses ESC-q to join paragraphs, so fmt is useful for other editors, such as vi. The following vi command fills and joins the remainder of the current paragraph:

>     !}fmt

### Options

-c

  Don't adjust the first two lines; align subsequent lines with the second line. Useful for paragraphs that begin with a hanging tag.

-s

  Split long lines but leave short lines alone. Useful for preserving partial lines of code.

-w `n`

  Create lines no longer than `n` columns wide. Default is 72. (Can also be invoked as -`n` for compatibility with BSD.)

-`width`

  Create lines no longer than `width`; default is 72 columns.

Reference: fmli |  | Reference: fmtmsg