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From: jdpeek@RODAN.ACS.SYR.EDU ("Jerry Peek")
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: How do I reformat paragraphs in vi?
Keywords: vi paragraph reformat
Message-ID: <8908261949.AA22491@rodan.acs.syr.edu>
Date: 26 Aug 89 20:49:47 GMT
References: <263@chip.UUCP>
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Reply-To: jdpeek@rodan.acs.syr.edu.uucp (Jerry Peek)
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Organization: Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY
Lines: 33

In article <263@chip.UUCP> ss@chip.UUCP (Steve Schossow) writes:
> I'm writing this with vi.  I know how to set my wrapmargin to get the
> paragraphs to break properly when I'm entering text.  But what if I
> re-arrange the text after entering it.  How do I get vi to reformat the
> result?  Does someone have a macro that will do what I need?

"vi" lets you feed a chunk of text from your buffer to an external
command, then read the result back to replace the original text.  Do
this with vi's ! (exclamation point) command.  The format is:
	!<where-to><filter_command>
where <where-to> is a "vi" where-to command like "}", "23G", "L", etc.
and <filter_command> is a utility like "fmt" (if you have it).

For example, to clean up the current paragraph, put your cursor on the
first line and type:
	!}fmt    (then press RETURN)
to do this paragraph and two more:
	!3}fmt
To clean up the rest of the file, use:
	!Gfmt
A count of lines works, too. For instance, to format this line and three more:
	4!!fmt

If your system doesn't have "fmt", there are public-domain ones around.
Once I wrote a shell script that used "nroff," plus a few nroff commands,
to do centering of lines.  Any program that reads stdin and writes stdout
will work.  My favorite is a shell script like "fmt" called "recomment".
It reformats comments in program source by figuring out what the comment
character(s) are, neatening the lines and putting back the comment characters.

--Jerry Peek; Syracuse University Academic Computing Services; Syracuse, NY
  jdpeek@rodan.acs.syr.edu///JDPEEK@SUVM.BITNET///GEnie: J.PEEK1
  +1 315 443-3995