Reformatting Text Using Pattern Matching
By Julius C. Duque, April 01, 2004
Whenever I write documents, I spend a considerable amount of time just reformatting lines of text so that they fit within a 70-character-wide column. I do this because I don't like reading long lines that wrap across the screen.
April, 2004: Reformatting Text Using Pattern Matching
1 ./pretty --width=64 --left --newline gettysburg.txt
2 ./pretty -w=64 -l -n gettysburg.txt
3 ./pretty -w 64 -l -n gettysburg.txt
4 ./pretty -w 64 -n gettysburg.txt
5 cat gettysburg.txt | ./pretty --width=64 --left --newline
1 Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this
2 continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to
3 the proposition that all men are created equal.
4
5 Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that
6 nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long
7 endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have
8 come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting
9 place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might
10 live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do
11 this.
Example 1: Left-justified output. Any of the five lines at the top will produce the output shown. You may omit --left (or -l) if you want your line to be left-justified, since it is switched on by default; see line 4 at the top.
