Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!cmcl2!brl-adm!umd5!ames!oliveb!intelca!mipos3!omepd!pcm
From: pcm@iwarpo3.intel.com (Phil C. Miller)
Newsgroups: comp.editors
Subject: Re: Reformatting in vi
Message-ID: <2736@omepd>
Date: 22 Jan 88 00:44:40 GMT
References: <1988Jan19.102343.3255@nonvon.uucp>
Sender: news@omepd
Reply-To: pcm@iwarpo3.UUCP (Phil C. Miller)
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Organization: Intel Corp., Hillsboro
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In article <1988Jan19.102343.3255@nonvon.uucp> cfj@nonvon.UUCP (Charlie Judson) writes:
>
>When editing with vi is there a "paragraph reform" capability similar to 
>Control-b in Wordstar?

In vi there is a mechanism for passing paragraphs to a simple text formatter
called fmt.  This utility simply does a 'fill' operation; that is, adds text
on a line until the line is full, then start the next line, etc.  This 
mechanism, when used in conjunction with with the J(oin) command, provides
a rudimentary capability which will do what you want.

You invoke this mechanism by typing:
!}fmt
This can be interpreted as follows:
   !       escapes the editor and invokes a Unix shell;
   }       indicates a paragraph-level entity is to be
           passed as standard input to the shell command;
   fmt     is the shell command to which the paragraph is
           to be passed, and which does the reformatting.

Vi somehow magically substitutes the new, reformatted text for the old, 
unformatted text in your edit file.

>  Charles Judson       ...!ptsfa!nonvon!cfj