unflatten(1)

unflatten1

Adjust directed graphs to improve layout aspect ratio

Usage

unflatten [-f?] [-llen] [-clen] [-o outfile] [files]

Overview

unflatten is a preprocessor to dot that is used to improve the aspect ratio of graphs having many leaves or disconnected nodes. The usual layout for such a graph is very wide or tall. unflatten creates chains with invisible edges or adjusts the minlen on edges to improve layout compaction.

Options

The following options are supported:

-l len

The minlen of leaf edges is staggered between 1 and len (a small integer).

-f

Applies the -l option to fanout nodes whose indegree and outdegree are both 1. This helps with structures such as a -> {w x y z} -> b. This option only works if the -l flag is set.

-c len

Form disconnected nodes into chains of up to len edges.

-o outfile

causes the output to be written to the specified file; by default, output is written to stdout.

-?

Prints the usage and exits.

Operands

The following operand is supported:

files

Names of files containing 1 or more graphs in dot format. If no files operand is specified, the standard input will be used.

Releases

12 releases since Debian 3.1 (Sarge); the text changed 1 time.

  1. 3.1–13
  2. Arch

-? since Arch Linux 2026-11-01.