Which statement about what Terraform fmt does by default is true?

• A. It only checks formatting
• B. It formats files in place by rewriting them
• C. It writes changes to a log file only
• D. It prints a diff but doesn't modify

Answer: (B)

Terraform fmt’s default behavior is to rewrite files in place to apply canonical formatting. It analyzes your Terraform configuration and then writes the formatted version back to the same files on disk, so the changes are permanent unless you revert them. This makes the code consistently formatted across the repository after a single run. If you only want to check whether formatting is needed without changing files, you can use a mode that performs a check and exits accordingly. If you want to see exactly what would change without applying it, you can request a diff of the changes. But by default, the command formats and updates the files directly.