HP-UX Reference (11i v3 07/02) - 1 User Commands N-Z (vol 2)

n
newform(1) newform(1)
NAME
newform - change or reformat a text file
SYNOPSIS
newform [-an][-b
n][-ck][-en][-f][
-itabspec][-ln][-otabspec][
-pn][-s]... [file]...
DESCRIPTION
newform 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
-e15 -l60 yield results different from
-l60 -e15. Options are applied to all files on the command
line.
Options
newform recognizes the following options:
-an Same as -pn except characters are appended to the end of a line.
-bn Truncate n characters from the beginning of the line when the line length is greater
than the effective line length (see -ln). The default is to truncate the number of
characters necessary to obtain the effective line length. The default value is used
when -b with no n is used. This option can be used to delete the sequence numbers
from a COBOL program as follows:
newform -l1 -b7 file-name
The -l1 must be used to set the effective line length shorter than any existing line in
the file so that the -b option is activated.
-ck Change the prefix/append character to k. The default character for k is a space.
-en Same as -bn except that characters are truncated from the end of the line.
-f 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 last -o option. If no -o option is specified, the line which is
printed contains the default specification of
-o8.
-itabspec 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 addi-
tion, tabspec can be --, in which newform 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
-o8.Atabspec of -o0 expects no tabs; if any are found,
they are treated as -o1.
-ln Set the effective line length to n characters. If n is not entered,
-l defaults to 72.
The default line length without the
-l option is 80 characters. Note that tabs and
backspaces are treated as single characters (use -i to expand tabs to spaces).
-otabspec Output tab specification: replaces spaces with tabs, according to the tab specifications
given. The tab specifications are the same as for -itabspec.Ifnotabspec is given,
tabspec defaults to -o8.Atabspec of -o0 means that no spaces will be converted to
tabs on output.
-pn Prefix n characters (see -ck) 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 neces-
sary to obtain the effective line length.
-s 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 pro-
cessed line.
40 Hewlett-Packard Company − 1 − HP-UX 11i Version 3: February 2007