fold manual with usage examples | BioQueue Encyclopedia

Usage

fold [OPTION]... [FILE]...

Manual

Wrap input lines in each FILE, writing to standard output. With no FILE, or when FILE is -, read standard input. Mandatory arguments to long options are mandatory for short options too.

Options

-b, --bytes: count bytes rather than columns
-c, --characters: count characters rather than columns
-s, --spaces: break at spaces
-w, --width=WIDTH: use WIDTH columns instead of 80
--help: display this help and exit
--version: output version information and exit

Examples

Fold long contents

The following command takes the input sentence from stdin and wraps it to a maximum width of 30 characters.

$ echo "This is a long sentence that needs to be wrapped to fit within a certain width." | fold -w 30

This is a long sentence that n
eeds to be wrapped to fit with
in a certain width.

Preserve Existing Word Breaks

The -s option tells fold to break lines at spaces instead of arbitrary points, which helps to preserve existing line breaks in the file.

$ echo "This is a long sentence that needs to be wrapped to fit within a certain width." | fold -s -w 30

This is a long sentence that
needs to be wrapped to fit
within a certain width.

fold

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