Sometimes, you might find yourself needing to reformat the content of a text file. For instance, imagine a file where each word is on its own line, and your goal is to merge all the words into one single line. While you could do this manually, it's definitely not efficient, especially if the file is large. Plus, this is just a simple example—real-world tasks can be far more complex.
The good news is that there's a command-line tool called `fmt` that can help with some of these formatting needs. This tutorial will guide you through the basic usage of `fmt` and highlight some of its most useful features. All commands and examples provided have been tested on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS.
The `fmt` command is a straightforward text formatter that can be run directly from the terminal. Its basic syntax looks like this:
```
fmt [-WIDTH] [OPTION]... [FILE]...
```
According to the manual page, `fmt` reformats each paragraph in a file and outputs the result to standard output. The `-WIDTH` option is an abbreviation for `--width=DIGITS`, which lets you set the maximum line width.
To give you a better understanding of how `fmt` works, let’s go through a few practical examples.
**Q1: How can I use `fmt` to format text into a single line?**
You can achieve this by using the basic form of the `fmt` command without any options. Simply pass the filename as an argument:
```
fmt file-name
```
After running this command, multiple lines of text will be merged into one line. Note that the original file remains unchanged.
**Q2: How can I adjust the maximum line width?**
By default, `fmt` sets the maximum line width to 75 characters. However, you can change this using the `-w` option followed by the desired number:
```
fmt -w 20 file-name
```
This example reduces the line width to 20 characters.
**Q3: How can I make `fmt` emphasize the first line?**
You can do this by adjusting the indentation of the first line using the `-t` option:
```
fmt -t file-name
```
This helps visually distinguish the first line from the rest.
**Q4: How can I split long lines using `fmt`?**
If you want to break long lines into shorter ones, use the `-s` option:
```
fmt -s file-name
```
This is particularly helpful when dealing with overly long paragraphs.
**Q5: How does `fmt` handle spacing between words?**
The `-u` option ensures that words are separated by a single space, while extra spaces are removed. This feature is enabled by default in most cases:
```
fmt -u file-name
```
In summary, while `fmt` may not offer advanced formatting capabilities, it’s still a powerful and handy tool for quick text reformatting. You never know when it might come in handy, especially for simple or repetitive tasks. This tutorial covered the main options available in `fmt`. For more detailed information, refer to the man page.
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