FMT(1)                      General Commands Manual                     FMT(1)

NAME
       fmt - Reformat paragraphs from input (or standard input) to stdout.

SYNOPSIS
       [OPTION]... [FILE]...

DESCRIPTION
       Reformat paragraphs from input (or standard input) to stdout.

OPTIONS
       -c, --crown-margin
              First and second line of paragraph may have different
              indentations, in which case the first line's indentation is
              preserved, and each subsequent line's indentation matches the
              second line.

       -t, --tagged-paragraph
              Like -c, except that the first and second line of a paragraph
              *must* have different indentation or they are treated as
              separate paragraphs.

       -m, --preserve-headers
              Attempt to detect and preserve mail headers in the input. Be
              careful when combining this flag with -p.

       -s, --split-only
              Split lines only, do not reflow.

       -u, --uniform-spacing
              Insert exactly one space between words, and two between
              sentences. Sentence breaks in the input are detected as [?!.]
              followed by two spaces or a newline; other punctuation is not
              interpreted as a sentence break.

       -p, --prefix <PREFIX>
              Reformat only lines beginning with PREFIX, reattaching PREFIX to
              reformatted lines. Unless -x is specified, leading whitespace
              will be ignored when matching PREFIX.

       -P, --skip-prefix <PSKIP>
              Do not reformat lines beginning with PSKIP. Unless -X is
              specified, leading whitespace will be ignored when matching
              PSKIP

       -x, --exact-prefix
              PREFIX must match at the beginning of the line with no preceding
              whitespace.

       -X, --exact-skip-prefix
              PSKIP must match at the beginning of the line with no preceding
              whitespace.

       -w, --width <WIDTH>
              Fill output lines up to a maximum of WIDTH columns, default 75.
              This can be specified as a negative number in the first
              argument.

       -g, --goal <GOAL>
              Goal width, default of 93% of WIDTH. Must be less than or equal
              to WIDTH.

       -q, --quick
              Break lines more quickly at the expense of a potentially more
              ragged appearance.

       -T, --tab-width <TABWIDTH> [default: 8]
              Treat tabs as TABWIDTH spaces for determining line length,
              default 8. Note that this is used only for calculating line
              lengths; tabs are preserved in the output.

       -h, --help
              Print help

       -V, --version
              Print version

       [FILES]


VERSION
       v(uutils coreutils) 0.11.0

                                  2026-09-01                            FMT(1)