Provided by: par_1.53.0-2_amd64 
NAME
par - filter for reformatting paragraphs
SYNOPSIS
par [ help ] [ version ] [ Bopset ] [ Popset ] [ Qopset ] [ Wopset ] [ Zopset ]
[ h[hang] ] [ p[prefix] ] [ r[repeat] ] [ s[suffix] ] [ T[Tab] ] [ w[width] ]
[ b[body] ] [ c[cap] ] [ d[div] ] [ E[Err] ] [ e[expel] ] [ f[fit] ] [ g[guess] ]
[ j[just] ] [ l[last] ] [ q[quote] ] [ R[Report] ] [ t[touch] ]
DESCRIPTION
par is a filter which copies its input to its output, changing all white characters
(except newlines) to spaces, and reformatting each paragraph. Paragraphs are separated by
protected, blank, and bodiless lines (see the TERMINOLOGY section for definitions), and
optionally delimited by indentation (see the d option in the OPTIONS section).
Each output paragraph is generated from the corresponding input paragraph as follows:
1) An optional prefix and/or suffix is removed from each input line.
2) The remainder is divided into words (separated by spaces).
3) The words are joined into lines to make an eye-pleasing paragraph.
4) The prefixes and suffixes are reattached.
If there are suffixes, spaces are inserted before them so that they all end in the same
column.
QUICK START
par is necessarily complex. For those who wish to use it immediately and understand it
later, assign the PARINIT environment variable the following value:
rTbgqR B=.,?'_A_a_@ Q=_s>|
The spaces, question mark, apostrophe, greater-than sign, and vertical bar will probably
have to be escaped or quoted to prevent your shell from interpreting them.
The documentation, though precise, is unfortunately not well-written for the end-user.
Your best bet is probably to read quickly the DESCRIPTION, TERMINOLOGY, OPTIONS, and
ENVIRONMENT sections, then read carefully the EXAMPLES section, referring back to the
OPTIONS and TERMINOLOGY sections as needed.
For the "power user", a full understanding of par will require multiple readings of the
TERMINOLOGY, OPTIONS, DETAILS, and EXAMPLES sections.
TERMINOLOGY
Miscellaneous terms:
charset syntax
A way of representing a set of characters as a string. The set includes
exactly those characters which appear in the string, except that the
underscore (_) is an escape character. Whenever it appears, it must begin
one of the following escape sequences:
__ = an underscore
_s = a space
_S = all space characters
_b = a backslash (\)
_q = a single quote (')
_Q = a double quote (")
_A = all upper case letters
_a = all lower case letters
_@ = all neither-case letters
_0 = all decimal digits
_xhh = the character represented by the two hexadecimal digits hh (which
may be upper or lower case)
The NUL character must not appear in the string, but it may be included in
the set with the _x00 sequence.
The exact meanings of _S, _A, _a, _@, and _0 are locale-dependent.
(Actually, all locales are supposed to agree on _0, but not on the others.)
In the default "C" locale: _S includes only space, formfeed, newline,
carriage return, tab, and vertical tab; _A includes only A through Z; _a
includes only a through z; _@ includes nothing; and _0 includes only 0
through 9.
error A condition which causes par to abort. See the DIAGNOSTICS section.
IP Input paragraph.
OP Output paragraph.
parameter
A symbol which may take on unsigned integral values. There are several
parameters whose values affect the behavior of par. Parameters can be
assigned values using command line options.
Types of characters:
alphanumeric character
An alphabetic character or decimal digit, _A_a_@_0 in charset syntax (see
above).
body character
A member of the set of characters defined by the PARBODY environment
variable (see the ENVIRONMENT section) and/or the B option (see the OPTIONS
section).
protective character
A member of the set of characters defined by the PARPROTECT environment
variable and/or the P option.
quote character
A member of the set of characters defined by the PARQUOTE environment
variable and/or the Q option.
terminal character
A member of the set of characters defined by the Z option. Initially,
before any Z options have been processed, the set contains period, question
mark, exclamation point, and colon.
white character
A member of the set of characters defined by the W option. Initially,
before any W options have been processed, the set contains space, formfeed,
newline, carriage return, tab, and vertical tab.
Functions:
comprelen
Given a non-empty sequence S of lines, let c be their longest common prefix.
If the parameter body is 0, place a divider just after the leading non-body
characters in c (at the beginning if there are none). If body is 1, place
the divider just after the last non-space non-body character in c (at the
beginning if there is none), then advance the divider over any immediately
following spaces. The comprelen of S is the number of characters preceding
the divider.
comsuflen
Given a non-empty sequence S of lines, let p be the comprelen of S. Let T
be the set of lines which result from stripping the first p characters from
each line in S. Let c be the longest common suffix of the lines in T. If
body is 0, place a divider just before the trailing non-body characters in c
(at the end if there are none), then advance the divider over all but the
last of any immediately following spaces. If body is 1, place the divider
just before the first non-space non-body character, then back up the divider
over one immediately preceding space if there is one. The comsuflen of S is
the number of characters following the divider.
fallback prelen (suflen)
The fallback prelen (suflen) of an IP is: the comprelen (comsuflen) of the
IP, if the IP contains at least two lines; otherwise, the comprelen
(comsuflen) of the block containing the IP, if the block contains at least
two lines; otherwise, the length of the longer of the prefixes (suffixes) of
the bodiless lines just above and below the block, if the segment containing
the block has any bodiless lines; otherwise, 0. (See below for the
definitions of block, segment, and bodiless line.)
augmented fallback prelen
Let fp be the fallback prelen of an IP. If the IP contains more than one
line, or if quote is 0, then the augmented fallback prelen of the IP is
simply fp. Otherwise, it is fp plus the number of quote characters
immediately following the first fp characters of the line.
quoteprefix
The quoteprefix of a line is the longest string of quote characters
appearing at the beginning of the line, after this string has been stripped
of any trailing spaces.
Types of lines:
blank line
An empty line, or a line whose first character is not protective and which
contains only spaces.
protected line
An input line whose first character is protective.
bodiless line
A line which is order k bodiless for some k.
order k bodiless line
There is no such thing as an order 0 bodiless line. Suppose S is a a
contiguous subsequence of a segment (see below) containing at least two
lines, containing no order k-1 bodiless lines, bounded above and below by
order k-1 bodiless lines and/or the beginning/end of the segment. Let p and
s be the comprelen and comsuflen of S. Any member of S which, if stripped
of its first p and last s characters, would be blank (or, if the line was
not inserted by the quote feature and the parameter repeat is non-zero,
would consist of the same character repeated at least repeat times), is
order k bodiless. The first p characters of the bodiless line comprise its
prefix; the last s characters comprise its suffix. The character which
repeats in the middle is called its repeat character. If the middle is
empty, the space is taken to be its repeat character.
vacant line
A bodiless line whose repeat character is the space.
superfluous line
Only blank and vacant lines may be superfluous. If contiguous vacant lines
lie at the beginning or end of a segment, they are all superfluous. But if
they lie between two non-vacant lines within a segment, then all are
superfluous except one—the one which contains the fewest non-spaces. In
case of a tie, the first of the tied lines is chosen. Similarly, if
contiguous blank lines lie outside of any segments at the beginning or end
of the input, they are all superfluous. But if they lie between two
segments and/or protected lines, then all are superfluous except the first.
Groups of lines:
segment
A contiguous sequence of input lines containing no protected or blank lines,
bounded above and below by protected lines, blank lines, and/or the
beginning/end of the input.
block A contiguous subsequence of a segment containing no bodiless lines, bounded
above and below by bodiless lines and/or the beginning/end of the segment.
Types of words:
capitalized word
If the parameter cap is 0, a capitalized word is one which contains at least
one alphanumeric character, whose first alphanumeric character is not a
lower case letter. If cap is 1, every word is considered a capitalized
word. (See the c option in the OPTIONS section.)
curious word
A word which contains a terminal character c such that there are no
alphanumeric characters in the word after c, but there is at least one
alphanumeric character in the word before c.
OPTIONS
Any command line argument may begin with one minus sign (-) which is ignored. Generally,
more than one option may appear in a single command line argument, but there are
exceptions: The help, version, B, P, and Q options must have whole arguments all to
themselves.
help Causes all remaining arguments to be ignored. No input is read. A usage
message is printed on the output briefly describing the options used by par.
version Causes all remaining arguments to be ignored. No input is read. "par "
followed by its version number is printed on the output.
Bopset op is a single character, either an equal sign (=), a plus sign (+), or a minus
sign (-), and set is a string using charset syntax. If op is an equal sign, the
set of body characters is set to the character set defined by set. If op is a
plus/minus sign, the characters in the set defined by set are added/removed
to/from the existing set of body characters defined by the PARBODY environment
variable and any previous B options. It is okay to add characters that are
already in the set or to remove characters that are not in the set.
Popset Just like the B option, except that it applies to the set of protective
characters.
Qopset Just like the B option, except that it applies to the set of quote characters.
Wopset Just like the B option, except that it applies to the set of white characters.
Zopset Just like the B option, except that it applies to the set of terminal
characters.
All remaining options are used to set values of parameters. Values set by command line
options hold for all paragraphs. Unset parameters are given default values. Any
parameters whose default values depend on the IP (namely prefix and suffix), if left
unset, are recomputed separately for each paragraph.
The approximate role of each variable is described here. See the DETAILS section for the
rest of the story.
The first six parameters, hang, prefix, repeat, suffix, Tab, and width, may be set to any
unsigned decimal integer less than 10000.
h[hang] Mainly affects the default values of prefix and suffix. Defaults to 0. If the
h option is given without a number, the value 1 is inferred. (See also the p
and s options.)
p[prefix] The first prefix characters of each line of the OP are copied from the first
prefix characters of the corresponding line of the IP. If there are more than
hang+1 lines in the IP, the default value is the comprelen of all the lines in
the IP except the first hang of them. Otherwise, the default value is the
augmented fallback prelen of the IP. If the p option is given without a number,
prefix is unset, even if it had been set earlier. (See also the h and q
options.)
r[repeat] If repeat is non-zero, bodiless lines have the number of instances of their
repeat characters increased or decreased until the length of the line is width.
The exact value of repeat affects the definition of bodiless line. Defaults to
0. If the r option is given without a number, the value 3 is inferred. (See
also the w option.)
s[suffix] The last suffix characters of each line of the OP are copied from the last
suffix characters of the corresponding line of the IP. If there are more than
hang+1 lines in the IP, the default value is the comsuflen of all the lines of
the IP except the first hang of them. Otherwise, the default value is the
fallback suflen of the IP. If the s option is given without a number, suffix is
unset, even if it had been set earlier. (See also the h option.)
T[Tab] Tab characters in the input are expanded to spaces, assuming tab stops every Tab
columns. Must not be 0. Defaults to 1. If the T option is given without a
number, the value 8 is inferred.
w[width] No line in the OP may contain more than width characters, not including the
trailing newlines. Defaults to 72. If the w option is given without a number,
the value 79 is inferred.
The remaining thirteen parameters, body, cap, div, Err, expel, fit, guess, invis, just,
last, quote, Report, and touch, may be set to either 0 or 1. If the number is absent in
the option, the value 1 is inferred.
b[body] If body is 1, prefixes may not contain any trailing body characters, and
suffixes may not contain any leading body characters. (Actually, the situation
is complicated by space characters. See comprelen and comsuflen in the
Terminology section.) If body is 0, prefixes and suffixes may not contain any
body characters at all. Defaults to 0.
c[cap] If cap is 1, all words are considered capitalized. This currently affects only
the application of the g option. Defaults to 0.
d[div] If div is 0, each block becomes an IP. If div is 1, each block is subdivided
into IPs as follows: Let p be the comprelen of the block. Let a line's status
be 1 if its (p+1)st character is a space, 0 otherwise. Every line in the block
whose status is the same as the status of the first line will begin a new
paragraph. Defaults to 0.
E[Err] If Err is 1, messages to the user (caused by the help and version options, or by
errors) are sent to the error stream instead of the output stream. Defaults to
0.
e[expel] If expel is 1, superfluous lines are withheld from the output. Defaults to 0.
f[fit] If fit is 1 and just is 0, par tries to make the lines in the OP as nearly the
same length as possible, even if it means making the OP narrower. Defaults to
0. (See also the j option.)
g[guess] If guess is 1, then when par is choosing line breaks, whenever it encounters a
curious word followed by a capitalized word, it takes one of two special
actions. If the two words are separated by a single space in the input, they
will be merged into one word with an embedded non-breaking space. If the two
words are separated by more than one space, or by a line break, par will insure
that they are separated by two spaces, or by a line break, in the output.
Defaults to 0.
i[invis] If invis is 1, then vacant lines inserted because quote is 1 are invisible; that
is, they are not output. If quote is 0, invis has no effect. Defaults to 0.
(See also the q option.)
j[just] If just is 1, par justifies the OP, inserting spaces between words so that all
lines in the OP have length width (except the last, if last is 0). Defaults to
0. (See also the w, l, and f options.)
l[last] If last is 1, par tries to make the last line of the OP about the same length as
the others. Defaults to 0.
q[quote] If quote is 1, then before each segment is scanned for bodiless lines, par
supplies vacant lines between different quotation nesting levels as follows:
For each pair of adjacent lines in the segment, (scanned from the top down)
which have different quoteprefixes, one of two actions is taken. If invis is 0,
and either line consists entirely of quote characters and spaces (or is empty),
that line is truncated to the longest common prefix of the two lines (both are
truncated if both qualify). Otherwise, a line consisting of the longest common
prefix of the two lines is inserted between them. quote also affects the
default value of prefix. Defaults to 0. (See also the p and i options.)
R[Report] If Report is 1, it is considered an error for an input word to contain more than
L = (width - prefix - suffix) characters. Otherwise, such words are chopped
after each Lth character into shorter words. Defaults to 0.
t[touch] Has no effect if suffix is 0 or just is 1. Otherwise, if touch is 0, all lines
in the OP have length width. If touch is 1, the length of the lines is
decreased until the suffixes touch the body of the OP. Defaults to the logical
OR of fit and last. (See also the s, j, w, f, and l options.)
If an argument begins with a number, that number is assumed to belong to a p option if it
is 8 or less, and to a w option otherwise.
If the value of any parameter is set more than once, the last value is used. When unset
parameters are assigned default values, hang and quote are assigned before prefix, and fit
and last are assigned before touch (because of the dependencies).
It is an error if width <= prefix + suffix.
ENVIRONMENT
PARBODY Determines the initial set of body characters (which are used for determining
comprelens and comsuflens), using charset syntax. If PARBODY is not set, the
set of body characters is initially empty.
PARINIT If set, par will read command line options from PARINIT before it reads them
from the command line. Within the value of PARINIT, arguments are separated by
the initial set of white characters.
PARPROTECT
Determines the set of protective characters, using charset syntax. If
PARPROTECT is not set, the set of protective characters is initially empty.
PARQUOTE Determines the set of quote characters, using charset syntax. If PARQUOTE is
not set, the set of quote characters initially contains only the greater-than
sign (>) and the space.
If a NUL character appears in the value of an environment variable, it and the rest of the
string will not be seen by par.
Note that the PARINIT variable, together with the B, P, and Q options, renders the other
environment variables unnecessary. They are included for backward compatibility.
DETAILS
Lines are terminated by newline characters, but the newlines are not considered to be
included in the lines. If the last character of the input is a non-newline, a newline
will be inferred immediately after it (but if the input is empty, no newline will be
inferred; the number of input lines will be 0). Thus, the input can always be viewed as a
sequence of lines.
Protected lines are copied unchanged from the input to the output. All other input lines,
as they are read, have any NUL characters removed, and every white character (except
newlines) turned into a space. Actually, each tab character is turned into Tab - (n %
Tab) spaces, where n is the number of characters preceding the tab character on the line
(evaluated after earlier tab characters have been expanded).
Blank lines in the input are transformed into empty lines in the output.
If repeat is 0, all bodiless lines are vacant, and they are all simply stripped of
trailing spaces before being output. If repeat is not 0, only vacant lines whose suffixes
have length 0 are treated that way; other bodiless lines have the number of instances of
their repeat characters increased or decreased until the length of the line is width.
If expel is 1, superfluous lines are not output. If quote and invis are both 1, there may
be invisible lines; they are not output.
The input is divided into segments, which are divided into blocks, which are divided into
IPs. The exact process depends on the values of quote and div (see q and d in the OPTIONS
section). The remainder of this section describes the process which is applied
independently to each IP to construct the corresponding OP.
After the values of the parameters are determined (see the OPTIONS section), the first
prefix characters and the last suffix characters of each input line are removed and
remembered. It is an error for any line to contain fewer than prefix + suffix characters.
The remaining text is treated as a sequence of characters, not lines. The text is broken
into words, which are separated by spaces. That is, a word is a maximal sub-sequence of
non-spaces. If guess is 1, some words might be merged (see g in the OPTIONS section).
The first word includes any spaces that precede it on the same line.
Let L = width - prefix - suffix.
If Report is 0, some words may get chopped up at this point (see R in the OPTIONS
section).
The words are reassembled, preserving their order, into lines. If just is 0, adjacent
words within a line are separated by a single space, (or sometimes two if guess is 1), and
line breaks are chosen so that the paragraph satisfies the following properties:
1) No line contains more than L characters.
2) If fit is 1, the difference between the lengths of the shortest and longest
lines is as small as possible.
3) The shortest line is as long as possible, subject to properties 1 and 2.
4) Let target be L if fit is 0, or the length of the longest line if fit is 1. The
sum of the squares of the differences between target and the lengths of the
lines is as small as possible, subject to properties 1, 2, and 3.
If last is 0, the last line does not count as a line for the purposes of properties
2, 3, and 4 above.
If all the words fit on a single line, the properties as worded above don't make much
sense. In that case, no line breaks are inserted.
If just is 1, adjacent words within a line are separated by one space (or sometimes two if
guess is 1) plus zero or more extra spaces. The value of fit is disregarded, and line
breaks are chosen so that the paragraph satisfies the following properties:
1) Every line contains exactly L characters.
2) The largest inter-word gap is as small as possible, subject to property 1. (An
inter-word gap consists only of the extra spaces, not the regular spaces.)
3) The sum of the squares of the lengths of the inter-word gaps is as small as
possible, subject to properties 1 and 2.
If last is 0, the last line does not count as a line for the purposes of property 1,
and it does not require or contain any extra spaces.
Extra spaces are distributed as uniformly as possible among the inter-word gaps in
each line.
In a justified paragraph, every line must contain at least two words, but that's not
always possible to accomplish. If the paragraph cannot be justified, it is
considered an error.
If the number of lines in the resulting paragraph is less than hang, empty lines are added
at the end to bring the number of lines up to hang.
If just is 0 and touch is 1, L is changed to be the length of the longest line.
If suffix is not 0, each line is padded at the end with spaces to bring its length up to
L.
To each line is prepended prefix characters. Let n be the number of lines in the IP, let
afp be the augmented fallback prelen of the IP, and let fs be the fallback suflen of the
IP. The characters which are prepended to the ith line are chosen as follows:
1) If i <= n, the characters are copied from the ones that were removed from the
beginning of the nth input line.
2) If i > n > hang, the characters are copied from the ones that were removed from the
beginning of the last input line.
3) If i > n and n <= hang, the first min(afp,prefix) of the characters are copied from
the ones that were removed from the beginning of the last input line, and the rest
are all spaces.
Then to each line is appended suffix characters. The characters which are appended to the
ith line are chosen as follows:
1) If i <= n, the characters are copied from the ones that were removed from the end
of the nth input line.
2) If i > n > hang, the characters are copied from the ones that were removed from the
end of the last input line.
3) If i > n and n <= hang, the first min(fs,suffix) of the characters are copied from
the ones that were removed from the beginning of the last input line, and the rest
are all spaces.
Finally, the lines are printed to the output as the OP.
DIAGNOSTICS
If there are no errors, par returns EXIT_SUCCESS (see <stdlib.h>).
If there is an error, an error message will be printed to the output, and par will return
EXIT_FAILURE. If the error is local to a single paragraph, the preceding paragraphs will
have been output before the error was detected. Line numbers in error messages are local
to the IP in which the error occurred. All error messages begin with "par error:" on a
line by itself. Error messages concerning command line or environment variable syntax are
accompanied by the same usage message that the help option produces.
Unless the option E is set, trying to print an error message would be futile if an error
resulted from an output function, so par doesn't bother doing any error checking on output
functions if E is 0.
EXAMPLES
The superiority of par's dynamic programming algorithm over a greedy algorithm (such as
the one used by fmt) can be seen in the following example:
Original paragraph (note that each line begins with 8 spaces):
We the people of the United States,
in order to form a more perfect union,
establish justice,
insure domestic tranquility,
provide for the common defense,
promote the general welfare,
and secure the blessing of liberty
to ourselves and our posterity,
do ordain and establish the Constitution
of the United States of America.
After a greedy algorithm with width = 39:
We the people of the United
States, in order to form a more
perfect union, establish
justice, insure domestic
tranquility, provide for the
common defense, promote the
general welfare, and secure the
blessing of liberty to
ourselves and our posterity, do
ordain and establish the
Constitution of the United
States of America.
After "par 39":
We the people of the United
States, in order to form a
more perfect union, establish
justice, insure domestic
tranquility, provide for the
common defense, promote the
general welfare, and secure
the blessing of liberty to
ourselves and our posterity,
do ordain and establish the
Constitution of the United
States of America.
The line breaks chosen by par are clearly more eye-pleasing.
par is most useful in conjunction with the text-filtering features of an editor, such as
the ! commands of vi. You may wish to add the following lines to your .exrc file:
" use Bourne shell for speed:
set shell=/bin/sh
"
" reformat paragraph with no arguments:
map ** {!}par^M}
"
" reformat paragraph with arguments:
map *^V {!}par
Note that the leading spaces must be removed, and that what is shown as ^M and ^V really
need to be ctrl-M and ctrl-V. Also note that the last map command contains two spaces
following the ctrl-V, plus one at the end of the line.
To reformat a simple paragraph delimited by blank lines in vi, you can put the cursor
anywhere in it and type "**" (star star). If you need to supply arguments to par, you can
type "* " (star space) instead, then type the arguments.
The rest of this section is a series of before-and-after pictures showing some typical
uses of par. In all cases, no environment variables are set.
Before:
/* We the people of the United States, */
/* in order to form a more perfect union, */
/* establish justice, */
/* insure domestic tranquility, */
/* provide for the common defense, */
/* promote the general welfare, */
/* and secure the blessing of liberty */
/* to ourselves and our posterity, */
/* do ordain and establish the Constitution */
/* of the United States of America. */
After "par 59":
/* We the people of the United States, in */
/* order to form a more perfect union, establish */
/* justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide */
/* for the common defense, promote the general */
/* welfare, and secure the blessing of liberty */
/* to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain */
/* and establish the Constitution of the United */
/* States of America. */
Or after "par 59f":
/* We the people of the United States, */
/* in order to form a more perfect union, */
/* establish justice, insure domestic */
/* tranquility, provide for the common */
/* defense, promote the general welfare, */
/* and secure the blessing of liberty to */
/* ourselves and our posterity, do ordain */
/* and establish the Constitution of the */
/* United States of America. */
Or after "par 59l":
/* We the people of the United States, in */
/* order to form a more perfect union, establish */
/* justice, insure domestic tranquility, */
/* provide for the common defense, promote */
/* the general welfare, and secure the */
/* blessing of liberty to ourselves and our */
/* posterity, do ordain and establish the */
/* Constitution of the United States of America. */
Or after "par 59lf":
/* We the people of the United States, */
/* in order to form a more perfect union, */
/* establish justice, insure domestic */
/* tranquility, provide for the common */
/* defense, promote the general welfare, */
/* and secure the blessing of liberty */
/* to ourselves and our posterity, do */
/* ordain and establish the Constitution */
/* of the United States of America. */
Or after "par 59lft0":
/* We the people of the United States, */
/* in order to form a more perfect union, */
/* establish justice, insure domestic */
/* tranquility, provide for the common */
/* defense, promote the general welfare, */
/* and secure the blessing of liberty */
/* to ourselves and our posterity, do */
/* ordain and establish the Constitution */
/* of the United States of America. */
Or after "par 59j":
/* We the people of the United States, in */
/* order to form a more perfect union, establish */
/* justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide */
/* for the common defense, promote the general */
/* welfare, and secure the blessing of liberty */
/* to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and */
/* establish the Constitution of the United */
/* States of America. */
Or after "par 59jl":
/* We the people of the United States, */
/* in order to form a more perfect */
/* union, establish justice, insure domestic */
/* tranquility, provide for the common defense, */
/* promote the general welfare, and secure */
/* the blessing of liberty to ourselves and */
/* our posterity, do ordain and establish the */
/* Constitution of the United States of America. */
Before:
Preamble We the people of the United States,
to the US in order to form
Constitution a more perfect union,
establish justice,
insure domestic tranquility,
provide for the common defense,
promote the general welfare,
and secure the blessing of liberty
to ourselves and our posterity,
do ordain and establish
the Constitution
of the United States of America.
After "par 52h3":
Preamble We the people of the United
to the US States, in order to form a
Constitution more perfect union, establish
justice, insure domestic
tranquility, provide for the
common defense, promote the
general welfare, and secure
the blessing of liberty to
ourselves and our posterity,
do ordain and establish the
Constitution of the United
States of America.
Before:
1 We the people of the United States,
2 in order to form a more perfect union,
3 establish justice,
4 insure domestic tranquility,
5 provide for the common defense,
6 promote the general welfare,
7 and secure the blessing of liberty
8 to ourselves and our posterity,
9 do ordain and establish the Constitution
10 of the United States of America.
After "par 59p12l":
1 We the people of the United States, in order to
2 form a more perfect union, establish justice,
3 insure domestic tranquility, provide for the
4 common defense, promote the general welfare,
5 and secure the blessing of liberty to ourselves
6 and our posterity, do ordain and establish the
7 Constitution of the United States of America.
Before:
> > We the people
> > of the United States,
> > in order to form a more perfect union,
> > establish justice,
> > ensure domestic tranquility,
> > provide for the common defense,
>
> Promote the general welfare,
> and secure the blessing of liberty
> to ourselves and our posterity,
> do ordain and establish
> the Constitution of the United States of America.
After "par 52":
> > We the people of the United States, in
> > order to form a more perfect union,
> > establish justice, ensure domestic
> > tranquility, provide for the common
> > defense,
>
> Promote the general welfare, and secure
> the blessing of liberty to ourselves and
> our posterity, do ordain and establish
> the Constitution of the United States of
> America.
Before:
> We the people
> of the United States,
> in order to form a more perfect union,
> establish justice,
> ensure domestic tranquility,
> provide for the common defense,
> Promote the general welfare,
> and secure the blessing of liberty
> to ourselves and our posterity,
> do ordain and establish
> the Constitution of the United States of America.
After "par 52d":
> We the people of the United States,
> in order to form a more perfect union,
> establish justice, ensure domestic
> tranquility, provide for the common
> defense,
> Promote the general welfare, and secure
> the blessing of liberty to ourselves and
> our posterity, do ordain and establish
> the Constitution of the United States of
> America.
Before:
# 1. We the people of the United States.
# 2. In order to form a more perfect union.
# 3. Establish justice, ensure domestic
# tranquility.
# 4. Provide for the common defense
# 5. Promote the general welfare.
# 6. And secure the blessing of liberty
# to ourselves and our posterity.
# 7. Do ordain and establish the Constitution.
# 8. Of the United States of America.
After "par 37p13dh":
# 1. We the people of the
# United States.
# 2. In order to form a more
# perfect union.
# 3. Establish justice,
# ensure domestic
# tranquility.
# 4. Provide for the common
# defense
# 5. Promote the general
# welfare.
# 6. And secure the blessing
# of liberty to ourselves
# and our posterity.
# 7. Do ordain and establish
# the Constitution.
# 8. Of the United States of
# America.
Before:
/*****************************************/
/* We the people of the United States, */
/* in order to form a more perfect union, */
/* establish justice, insure domestic */
/* tranquility, */
/* */
/* */
/* [ provide for the common defense, ] */
/* [ promote the general welfare, ] */
/* [ and secure the blessing of liberty ] */
/* [ to ourselves and our posterity, ] */
/* [ ] */
/* */
/* do ordain and establish the Constitution */
/* of the United States of America. */
/******************************************/
After "par 42r":
/********************************/
/* We the people of the */
/* United States, in order to */
/* form a more perfect union, */
/* establish justice, insure */
/* domestic tranquility, */
/* */
/* */
/* [ provide for the common ] */
/* [ defense, promote the ] */
/* [ general welfare, and ] */
/* [ secure the blessing of ] */
/* [ liberty to ourselves ] */
/* [ and our posterity, ] */
/* [ ] */
/* */
/* do ordain and establish the */
/* Constitution of the United */
/* States of America. */
/********************************/
Or after "par 42re":
/********************************/
/* We the people of the */
/* United States, in order to */
/* form a more perfect union, */
/* establish justice, insure */
/* domestic tranquility, */
/* */
/* [ provide for the common ] */
/* [ defense, promote the ] */
/* [ general welfare, and ] */
/* [ secure the blessing of ] */
/* [ liberty to ourselves ] */
/* [ and our posterity, ] */
/* */
/* do ordain and establish the */
/* Constitution of the United */
/* States of America. */
/********************************/
Before:
Joe Public writes:
> Jane Doe writes:
> >
> >
> > I can't find the source for uncompress.
> Oh no, not again!!!
>
>
> Isn't there a FAQ for this?
>
>
That wasn't very helpful, Joe. Jane,
just make a link from uncompress to compress.
After "par 40q":
Joe Public writes:
> Jane Doe writes:
>
>
> > I can't find the source for
> > uncompress.
>
> Oh no, not again!!!
>
>
> Isn't there a FAQ for this?
>
That wasn't very helpful, Joe.
Jane, just make a link from
uncompress to compress.
Or after "par 40qe":
Joe Public writes:
> Jane Doe writes:
>
> > I can't find the source for
> > uncompress.
>
> Oh no, not again!!!
>
> Isn't there a FAQ for this?
That wasn't very helpful, Joe.
Jane, just make a link from
uncompress to compress.
Or after "par 40qi":
Joe Public writes:
> Jane Doe writes:
> >
> >
> > I can't find the source for
> > uncompress.
> Oh no, not again!!!
>
>
> Isn't there a FAQ for this?
>
>
That wasn't very helpful, Joe.
Jane, just make a link from
uncompress to compress.
Or after "par 40qie":
Joe Public writes:
> Jane Doe writes:
> > I can't find the source for
> > uncompress.
> Oh no, not again!!!
>
> Isn't there a FAQ for this?
That wasn't very helpful, Joe.
Jane, just make a link from
uncompress to compress.
Before:
I sure hope there's still room
in Dr. Jones' section of archaeology.
I've heard he's the bestest. [sic]
After "par 50g":
I sure hope there's still room in
Dr. Jones' section of archaeology. I've
heard he's the bestest. [sic]
Or after "par 50gc":
I sure hope there's still room in
Dr. Jones' section of archaeology. I've
heard he's the bestest. [sic]
Before:
John writes:
: Mary writes:
: + Anastasia writes:
: + > Hi all!
: + Hi Ana!
: Hi Ana & Mary!
Please unsubscribe me from alt.hello.
After "par Q+:+ q":
John writes:
: Mary writes:
:
: + Anastasia writes:
: +
: + > Hi all!
: +
: + Hi Ana!
:
: Hi Ana & Mary!
Please unsubscribe me from alt.hello.
Before:
amc> The b option was added primarily to deal with
amc> this new style of quotation
amc> which became popular after Par 1.41 was released.
amc>
amc> Par still pays attention to body characters.
amc> Par should not mistake "Par" for part of the prefix.
amc> Par should not mistake "." for a suffix.
After "par B=._A_a 50bg":
amc> The b option was added primarily to
amc> deal with this new style of quotation
amc> which became popular after Par 1.41
amc> was released.
amc>
amc> Par still pays attention to body
amc> characters. Par should not mistake
amc> "Par" for part of the prefix. Par
amc> should not mistake "." for a suffix.
SEE ALSO
par.doc
LIMITATIONS
The guess feature guesses wrong in cases like the following:
I calc'd the approx.
Fermi level to 3 sig. digits.
With guess = 1, par will incorrectly assume that "approx." ends a sentence. If the input
were:
I calc'd the approx. Fermi
level to 3 sig. digits.
then par would refuse to put a line break between "approx." and "Fermi" in the output,
mainly to avoid creating the first situation (in case the paragraph were to be fed back
through par again). This non-breaking space policy does come in handy for cases like
"Mr. Johnson" and "Jan. 1", though.
The guess feature only goes one way. par can preserve wide sentence breaks in a
paragraph, or remove them, but it can't insert them if they aren't already in the input.
If you use tabs, you may not like the way par handles (or doesn't handle) them. It
expands them into spaces. I didn't let par output tabs because tabs don't make sense.
Not everyone's terminal has the same tab settings, so text files containing tabs are
sometimes mangled. In fact, almost every text file containing tabs gets mangled when
something is inserted at the beginning of each line (when quoting e-mail or commenting out
a section of a shell script, for example), making them a pain to edit. In my opinion, the
world would be a nicer place if everyone stopped using tabs, so I'm doing my part by not
letting par output them. (Thanks to Eric Stuebe for showing me the light about tabs.)
There is currently no way for the length of the output prefix to differ from the length of
the input prefix. Ditto for the suffix. I may consider adding this capability in a
future release, but right now I'm not sure how I'd want it to work.
APOLOGIES
Par began in July 1993 as a small program designed to do one narrow task: reformat a
single paragraph that might have a border on either side. It was pretty clean back then.
Over the next three months, it very rapidly expanded to handle multiple paragraphs, offer
more options, and take better guesses, at the cost of becoming extremely complex, and very
unclean. It is nowhere near the optimal design for the larger task it now tries to
address. Its only redeeming features are that it is extremely useful (I find it
indispensable), extremely portable, and very stable since version 1.41 released on
1993-Oct-31.
Back in 1993 I had very little experience at writing documentation for users, so the
documentation for Par became rather nightmarish. There is no separation between how-it-
works (which is painfully complex) and how-to-use-it (which is fairly simple, if you can
ever figure it out).
Someday I ought to reexamine the problem, and redesign a new, clean solution from scratch.
I don't know when I might get enough free time to start on such a project. Text files may
be obsolete by then.
BUGS
If I knew of any bugs, I wouldn't release the package. Of course, there may be bugs that
I haven't yet discovered.
If you find any bugs (in the program or in the documentation), or if you have any
suggestions, please contact me:
http://www.nicemice.net/amc/
When reporting a bug, please include the exact input and command line options used, and
the version number of par, so that I can reproduce it.
The latest release of Par is available on the Web at:
http://www.nicemice.net/par/
I don't expect these URLs to change in the forseeable future, but if they do, I'll try to
leave forward pointers.