How to Wrap Lines Within Columns in Linux

Bash: Wrap Long Lines Inside the Same Column

Actually, the util-linux 'column' command can do it. It is very versatile.

#!/bin/bash

cat <<- EOF | column --separator '|' \
                     --table \
                     --output-width 30 \
                     --table-noheadings \
                     --table-columns C1,C2 \
                     --table-wrap C2
key1|Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua.
key2|blahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhzzz
EOF

This gives :

key1  Lorem ipsum dolor sit am
      et, consectetur adipisci
      ng elit, sed do eiusmod
      tempor incididunt ut lab
      ore et dolore magna aliq
      ua.
key2  blahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
      hhhhhhhzzz

--output-width : give desired size (can use 'tput cols' as described above)

--table-columns C1,C2 : give names to columns to be used with other options

--table-wrap C2 : wrap column 2

Column version :

# column -V
column from util-linux 2.33.1

Wrap a single oversize column with awk / bash (pretty print)

First build a test file (called file.txt):

echo "AA  BBBB  CCC
01  Item  Description here
02  Meti  A very very veeeery long description which will easily extend the recommended output width of 80 characters.
03  Etim  Last description" > file.txt

Now the script (called ./split-columns.sh):

#!/bin/bash
FILE=$1

#find position of 3rd column (starting with 'CCC')
padding=`cat $FILE | head -n1 |  grep -aob 'CCC' | grep -oE '[0-9]+'`
paddingstr=`printf "%-${padding}s" ' '`

#set max length
maxcolsize=50
maxlen=$(($padding + $maxcolsize))

cat $FILE | while read line; do 
  #split the line only if it exceeds the desired length
  if [[ ${#line} -gt $maxlen ]] ; then 
    echo "$line" | fmt -s -w$maxcolsize - | head -n1
    echo "$line" | fmt -s -w$maxcolsize - | tail -n+2 | sed "s/^/$paddingstr/"
  else
    echo "$line";
  fi; 
done;

Finally run it with the file as a single argument

./split-columns.sh file.txt > fixed-width-file.txt

Output will be:

AA  BBBB  CCC
01  Item  Description here
02  Meti  A very very veeeery long description
          which will easily extend the recommended output
          width of 80 characters.
03  Etim  Last description

cat file with no line wrap

Note that cut accepts a filename as an argument.

This seems to work for me:

watch 'bash -c "cut -c -$COLUMNS file"'

For testing, I added a right margin:

watch 'bash -c "cut -c -$(($COLUMNS-10)) file"'

When I resized my terminal, the truncation was updated to match.

vim command to restructure/force text to 80 columns

Set textwidth to 80 (:set textwidth=80), move to the start of the file (can be done with Ctrl-Home or gg), and type gqG.

gqG formats the text starting from the current position and to the end of the file. It will automatically join consecutive lines when possible. You can place a blank line between two lines if you don't want those two to be joined together.

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