August 18, 2007 ATF-FORMAT 1

### NAME

atf-format - formats a text paragraph to fit nicely on screen

### SYNOPSIS

atf-format [str1[ .. strN]] atf-format -t tag [-l length] [-r] [str1[ .. strN]] atf-format -h

### DESCRIPTION

atf-format formats text messages to not overflow the terminal's width, and optionally adds a prefix string to them. Messages can be fed through the standard input or through multiple arguments; in the latter case, all of them are concatenated as if they were separated by a single space. Different lines (those separated by a new-line character) are treated as different paragraphs and thus formatted accordingly.

In the first synopsis form, atf-format formats the message to not overflow the terminal's width. The message is supposed to start at column 0.

In the second synopsis form, atf-format also formats the message to not overflow the terminal's width, but it appends a tag to the beginning of the string. This tag may or may be not repeated on each line of the text; if it is not repeated, the text is simply indented. This synopsis form is useful to easily format two-column tables, being the first one much shorter than the second one. The message is supposed to start at column 0.

In the third synopsis form, atf-format will print information about all supported options and their purpose.

The following options are available:

-h
  Shows a short summary of all available options and their purpose.

-l length
  Specifies the length in characters of te tag. Useful if the tag is shorter than the desired length, which happens when formatting two-column tables.

-r
  Repeat the tag on each line. Otherwise it is only shown on the first one, and all others are indented appropriately using whitespace.

-t tag
  Specifies the tag to use

### SEE ALSO

atf(7)