| fold | |
| Author: | Bill Joy |
| Operating System: | Unix and Unix-like |
| Platform: | Cross-platform |
| Genre: | Command |
| License: | coreutils GNU GPL v3 |
fold is a Unix command used for making a file with long lines more readable on a limited width computer terminal by performing a line wrap.
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.
The utility first appeared in 1BSD of 1977 and was originally written by Bill Joy.[1]
is part of the X/Open Portability Guide since issue 4 of 1992. It was inherited into the first version of POSIX.1 and the Single Unix Specification.
The version of fold bundled in GNU coreutils was written by David MacKenzie.[2]
The command is available as a separate package for Microsoft Windows as part of the UnxUtils collection of native Win32 ports of common GNU Unix-like utilities.[3]
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:
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