After you’ve been typing away—writing the Great American Novel, perhaps—you might notice that you’re suffering from creeping margin uglies, like those shown in Code Listing 6.21. Never fear, fmt can help. Just run your text through fmt, and all will be well.
fmt spiderstory.unformatted
At the shell prompt, just tell fmt to do its thing, and you’ll be in business.
✓ Tip
You can supplement fmt with handy flags to help make lines more readable. For example, you can often use fmt –u to make spacing uniform: one space between words, and two spaces between sentences. Or, try fmt –w to specify the width of the formatted text; for example, –w 60 would specify a 60-character-wide line.
[jdoe@frazz jdoe]$ cat spiderstory.unformatted This morning I got up, went downstairs, and found a HUMONGOUS spider in the bathroom where the little potty is. After I quietly composed myself from the shock (I didn't want to alert the kids), I looked around the house for something to put him in...the kids' bug catcher thing (nowhere to be found)...a jar...tupperware...a lidded cup...the salad spinner (BwaaaaHaaaHaaa!).... I went back and checked on the spider and decided that I just couldn't face putting him in something. I mean, what if he got close to me...or TOUCHED me?!?! And, since I hate the crunching sound and feel of squashing bugs, I knew I couldn't just kill him. This spider had *bones*, I'm tellin' ya' So,I hunted for bug spray. And hunted. But nothing. [jdoe@frazz jdoe]$ fmt spiderstory.unformatted This morning I got up, went downstairs, and found a HUMONGOUS spider in the bathroom where the little potty is. After I quietly composed myself from the shock (I didn't want to alert the kids), I looked around the house for something to put him in...the kids' bug catcher thing (nowhere to be found)...a jar...tupperware...a lidded cup...the salad spinner (BwaaaaHaaaHaaa!).... I went back and checked on the spider and decided that I just couldn't face putting him in something. I mean, what if he got close to me...or TOUCHED me?!?! And, since I hate the crunching sound and feel of squashing bugs, I knew I couldn't just kill him. This spider had *bones*, I'm tellin' ya'. So, I hunted for bug spary. And hunted. But nothing. |