Line wrapping text made easy with fold
Line wrapping text from the command line is easy with the fold utility, which of course is provided by the Free Software Foundation. By default, the fold command will wrap text at 80 characters, but you can of course specify the width manually. I prefer using the -s option, which will break only on spaces, making sure not to break in the middle of a word.
For example, the following command will concatenate a text file to standard output, adding line breaks only at spaces or at 72 characters, whichever comes first.
fold -s -w 72 textfile.txt
This can also be useful if you want to clearsign a message with Gnupg, but wish to line wrap it beforehand.
fold -s -w 72 textfile.txt | gpg --clearsign -u user@email.com Add redirection if you wish to output the results to a file.
fold -s -w 72 textfile.txt > newfile.txt
