Lesson plan

Par (command)

The computer program par is a text formatting utility for Unix and Unix-like operating systems, written by Adam M. Costello as a replacement for the fmt command. Par reformats paragraphs of text to fit into a given line length optimally, keeping prefixes and suffixes intact, which is useful for formatting source code comments. It also understands the conventions commonly used for quoting in email replies, and is capable of intelligently reformatting these several levels deep while rewrapping the text they quote. Par can be invoked from text editors such as Vim or Emacs. To support Unicode par needs to be compiled with a patch that adds multi-byte character support, typically, UTF-8 encoding. Unlike fmt, par also supports text justification.

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Article summary

The computer program par is a text formatting utility for Unix and Unix-like operating systems, written by Adam M. Costello as a replacement for the fmt command. Par reformats paragraphs of text to fit into a given line length optimally, keeping prefixes and suffixes intact, which is useful for formatting source code comments. It also understands the conventions commonly used for quoting in email replies, and is capable of intelligently reformatting these several levels deep while rewrapping the text they quote. Par can be invoked from text editors such as Vim or Emacs. To support Unicode par needs to be compiled with a patch that adds multi-byte character support, typically, UTF-8 encoding. Unlike fmt, par also supports text justification.

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Discussion questions

  1. Summarise the article in your own words. Which single claim would you verify first, and why?
  2. Which claim in this article is most likely to be revised as the sources update? How would you check its current status?
  3. If two sources disagreed about one of these facts, what would you need in order to trust one over the other?

Bibliography

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Key claims and bibliography are generated from the same tracked claims and sources as the article page.