reformat - tool to simple format plain ascii texts

reformat [-h] [-j] [-l margin] [-p] [-w width]

reformat is a simple tool to reformat plain texts. reformat reads from stdin and writes to stdout.

Available options are:

-h

prints usage information

-j

switch justify mode: Each line of a paragraph will have the same width (see -w option). To reach this, spaces (' ') will be added between words. Default: disabled

-l left-margin

Sets the left margin to left-margin. The margin is produced by left-margin spaces (' '), no tabs will be used. Default: 0

-p

Accept lines beginning with a whitespace as usual paragraphs, too.

-w width

Sets the paragraph width to width. No reformatted line will be longer than width (plus defined margins) then. Default: 72

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reformat isn't an intelligent program. It just reads a whole paragraph into a buffer and then reformats it. The end of a paragraph is indicated by an empty line (may also contain spaces or tabs) or at a line beginning with whitespaces (if you don't use -p option). Lines beginning with whitespaces are lines to keep untouched. Nothing happens with them, unless you use -p option (as just mentioned).

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reformat doesn't look for hyphenation and hyphens at all. It won't make new lines when reached a hyphen. reformat works word-by-word.

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reformat doesn't detect 'small paragraphs' (paragraphs without an empty line).

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Check for errors! If reformat detects a word with a length greater than the specified width, it will abort.

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reformat has problems with control characters. Some text documents contain the ^L character (0x0c), for example.

Planned features are:

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Fix some problems, see LIMITATIONS.

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Add an option to declare a string that indicates don't reformat in the text. Would be nice on reformatting emails, and don't touch the quoteas ('> '-lines).

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Add an option (e.g. -i) to keep indenting.

reformat < foo > bar

Reads text from foo, reformats and writes to bar.

reformat -l 15 -j -w 50 < foo

Nice justified, centered text from file foo on an 80x25 terminal.

fold(1)

(C) Stephan Beyer <s-beyer@gmx.net>, 2003-2004, GPL