Fold (Unix)

Fold is a Unix command used for making a file with long lines more readable on a limited width terminal. Most Unix terminals have a default screen width of 80, and therefore reading files with long lines could get annoying. The fold command puts a line feed every X characters if it does not reach a new line before that point. If the -w argument is set, the fold command allows the user to set the maximum length of a line.

Example

As a usage example, to fold a file named file.txt to have a maximum of 50 characters per line, one could run the following command:

fold -w 50 file.txt

file.txt:

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Curabitur dignissim
venenatis pede. Quisque dui dui, ultricies ut, facilisis non, pulvinar non,
purus. Duis quis arcu a purus volutpat iaculis. Morbi id dui in diam ornare
dictum. Praesent consectetuer vehicula ipsum. Praesent tortor massa, congue et,
ornare in, posuere eget, pede. 

Vivamus rhoncus. Quisque lacus. In hac habitasse platea dictumst. Nullam mauris
tellus, sollicitudin non, semper eget, sodales non, pede. Phasellus varius
ullamcorper libero. Fusce ipsum lorem, iaculis nec, vulputate vitae, suscipit
vel, tortor. Cras varius.

Nullam fringilla pellentesque orci. Nulla eu ante pulvinar velit rhoncus
lacinia. Morbi fringilla lacus quis arcu. Vestibulum sem quam, dapibus in,
fringilla ut, venenatis ut, neque.

output:

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscin
g elit. Curabitur dignissim
venenatis pede. Quisque dui dui, ultricies ut, fac
ilisis non, pulvinar non,
purus. Duis quis arcu a purus volutpat iaculis. Mo
rbi id dui in diam ornare
dictum. Praesent consectetuer vehicula ipsum. Prae
sent tortor massa, congue et,
ornare in, posuere eget, pede. 

Vivamus rhoncus. Quisque lacus. In hac habitasse p
latea dictumst. Nullam mauris
tellus, sollicitudin non, semper eget, sodales non
, pede. Phasellus varius
ullamcorper libero. Fusce ipsum lorem, iaculis nec
, vulputate vitae, suscipit
vel, tortor. Cras varius.

Nullam fringilla pellentesque orci. Nulla eu ante 
pulvinar velit rhoncus
lacinia. Morbi fringilla lacus quis arcu. Vestibul
um sem quam, dapibus in,
fringilla ut, venenatis ut, neque.

Unix command-line interface programs and shell builtins

File system	cat chmod chown chgrp cksum cmp cp dd du df file fsck fuser ln ls mkdir mount mv pax pwd rm rmdir split tee touch type umask

Processes	at bg chroot cron fg kill killall nice pgrep pkill ps pstree time top

User environment	clear env exit finger history logname mesg passwd su sudo uptime talk tput uname w wall who whoami write

Text processing	awk banner basename comm csplit cut diff dirname ed ex fmt fold head iconv join less more nl paste printf sed sort spell strings tail tr uniq vi wc xargs yes

Shell builtins	alias cd echo test unset wait

Networking	dig host ifconfig inetd netcat netstat nslookup ping rdate rlogin route ssh traceroute

Searching	find grep locate whatis whereis

Documentation	apropos help man

Miscellaneous	bc dc cal expr lp od sleep true and false

List of Unix commands

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Fold (Unix)

Example

See also