newform(1)						      General Commands Manual							newform(1)

NAME

       newform - change or reformat a text file

SYNOPSIS

       [file]...

DESCRIPTION

       reads  lines  from  the	named  files, or standard input if no input file is named, and reproduces the lines on standard output.  Lines are
       reformatted in accordance with command line options in effect.

       Command line options can appear in any order, can be repeated, and can be intermingled with the optional files.	Command line  options  are
       processed  in  the order specified.  This means that option sequences such as yield results different from Options are applied to all files
       on the command line.

   Options
       recognizes the following options:

	      Same as	     except characters are appended to the end of a line.

	      Truncate	     n characters from the beginning of the line when the line length is greater than the effective line length  (see  The
			     default  is to truncate the number of characters necessary to obtain the effective line length.  The default value is
			     used when with no n is used.  This option can be used to delete the sequence numbers from a COBOL program as follows:

			     The must be used to set the effective line length shorter than any existing line in the file so that  the	option	is
			     activated.

	      Change the prefix/append character to
			     k.  The default character for k is a space.

	      Same as	     except that characters are truncated from the end of the line.

	      Write the tab specification format line on the standard output
			     before  any other lines are output.  The tab specification format line which is printed will correspond to the format
			     specified in the option.  If no option is specified, the line which is printed contains the default specification of

	      Input tab specification:
			     expands tabs to spaces, according to the tab specifications given.  The  tabspec  recognizes  all	tab  specification
			     forms  described  in tabs(1).  In addition, tabspec can be in which assumes that the tab specification is to be found
			     in the first line read from the standard input (see fspec(4)).  If no tabspec is given, tabspec defaults to A tabspec
			     of expects no tabs; if any are found, they are treated as

	      Set the effective line length to
			     n	characters.   If  n  is not entered, defaults to 72.  The default line length without the option is 80 characters.
			     Note that tabs and backspaces are treated as single characters (use to expand tabs to spaces).

	      Output tab specification:
			     replaces spaces with tabs, according to the tab specifications given.  The tab specifications are the same as for	If
			     no tabspec is given, tabspec defaults to A tabspec of means that no spaces will be converted to tabs on output.

	      Prefix	     n	characters  (see  to  the  beginning  of  a line when the line length is less than the effective line length.  The
			     default is to prefix the number of characters necessary to obtain the effective line length.

	      Shear off leading characters on each line up to the first tab and
			     place up to 8 of the sheared characters at the end of the line.  If more than 8 characters (not  counting	the  first
			     tab)  are	sheared,  the  eighth character is replaced by a and any characters to the right of it are discarded.  The
			     first tab is always discarded.

			     An error message and program exit occur if this option is used on a file without a tab on each line.  The	characters
			     sheared off are saved internally until all other options specified are applied to that line.  The characters are then
			     added at the end of the processed line.

			     For example, to convert a file with leading digits, one or more tabs, and text on each line, to a file beginning with
			     the  text,  all  tabs after the first expanded to spaces, padded with spaces out to column 72 (or truncated to column
			     72), and the leading digits placed starting at column 73, the command would be:

RETURN VALUE

       returns one of the following values:

	      No errors encountered.

	      An error occurred.

DIAGNOSTICS

       All diagnostics are fatal.

       was called with a bad option.

       There was no tab on one line.

       Self-explanatory.

       A line exceeds 512 characters
		 after being expanded in the internal work buffer.

       A tab specification is incorrectly formatted,
		 or specified tab stops are not ascending.

       A	 tabspec read from a file (or standard input) must not contain a tabspec referencing another file (or standard input).

WARNINGS

       normally only keeps track of physical characters; however, for the and options, keeps track of backspaces in order to line up tabs  in  the
       appropriate logical columns.

       does not prompt the user if a tabspec is to be read from the standard input (by use of or

       If the option is used, and the last option specified was and was preceded by either a or a the tab specification format line will be incor-
       rect.

SEE ALSO

       csplit(1), tabs(1), fspec(4).

																	newform(1)