fmt(1) — Linux manual page

FMT(1)                        User Commands                        FMT(1)

NAME         top

       fmt - simple optimal text formatter

SYNOPSIS         top

       fmt [-WIDTH] [OPTION]... [FILE]...

DESCRIPTION         top

       Reformat each paragraph in the FILE(s), writing to standard
       output.  The option -WIDTH is an abbreviated form of
       --width=DIGITS.

       With no FILE, or when FILE is -, read standard input.

       Mandatory arguments to long options are mandatory for short
       options too.

       -c, --crown-margin
              preserve indentation of first two lines

       -p, --prefix=STRING
              reformat only lines beginning with STRING, reattaching the
              prefix to reformatted lines

       -s, --split-only
              split long lines, but do not refill

       -t, --tagged-paragraph
              indentation of first line different from second

       -u, --uniform-spacing
              one space between words, two after sentences

       -w, --width=WIDTH
              maximum line width (default of 75 columns)

       -g, --goal=WIDTH
              goal width (default of 93% of width)

       --help display this help and exit

       --version
              output version information and exit

AUTHOR         top

       Written by Ross Paterson.

REPORTING BUGS         top

       GNU coreutils online help:
       <https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/>
       Report any translation bugs to
       <https://translationproject.org/team/>

COPYRIGHT         top

       Copyright © 2025 Free Software Foundation, Inc.  License GPLv3+:
       GNU GPL version 3 or later <https://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>.
       This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.
       There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.

SEE ALSO         top

       Full documentation <https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/fmt>
       or available locally via: info '(coreutils) fmt invocation'

COLOPHON         top

       This page is part of the coreutils (basic file, shell and text
       manipulation utilities) project.  Information about the project
       can be found at ⟨http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/⟩.  If you
       have a bug report for this manual page, see
       ⟨http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/⟩.  This page was obtained
       from the tarball coreutils-9.7.tar.xz fetched from
       ⟨http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/coreutils/⟩ on 2025-08-11.  If you
       discover any rendering problems in this HTML version of the page,
       or you believe there is a better or more up-to-date source for the
       page, or you have corrections or improvements to the information
       in this COLOPHON (which is not part of the original manual page),
       send a mail to [email protected]

GNU coreutils 9.7               April 2025                         FMT(1)

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