FMT(1) General Commands Manual FMT(1)

# [NAME](#NAME)

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

# [SYNOPSIS](#SYNOPSIS)

\[OPTION]... \[FILE]...

# [DESCRIPTION](#DESCRIPTION)

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

# [OPTIONS](#OPTIONS)

[**-c**, **--crown-margin**](#c)

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**](#t)

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**](#m)

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

[**-s**, **--split-only**](#s)

Split lines only, do not reflow.

[**-u**, **--uniform-spacing**](#u)

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>*](#p)

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>*](#P)

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

[**-x**, **--exact-prefix**](#x)

PREFIX must match at the beginning of the line with no preceding whitespace.

[**-X**, **--exact-skip-prefix**](#X)

PSKIP must match at the beginning of the line with no preceding whitespace.

[**-w**, **--width** *<WIDTH>*](#w)

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>*](#g)

Goal width, default of 93% of WIDTH. Must be less than or equal to WIDTH.

[**-q**, **--quick**](#q)

Break lines more quickly at the expense of a potentially more ragged appearance.

[**-T**, **--tab-width** *<TABWIDTH>* \[default: 8\]](#T)

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**](#h)

Print help

[**-V**, **--version**](#V)

Print version

\[*FILES*]

# [VERSION](#VERSION)

v(uutils coreutils) 0.12.0

2026-09-17

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Document: fmt(1) from uutils 0.12.0-r0 (Chainguard OS)
Source: https://github.com/uutils/coreutils