To re or not to re ... ( word wrap function?)

[Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams]

On Fri, 21 Sep 2001, Chris Barker wrote:

> I was just asked if it would be hard to write a script that would take
> the output from an MS word: "save as text" operation, and re-format it
> so it was wrapped to 80 character lines. I said it would be easy, then I
> thought about it and realised it was not quite as trivial as I thought.
> First I came up with a function that used a few string methods, but was
> mostly "by hand". Then I tried an re version. It turned out to be not
> much easier or shorter, though probably a little faster. I have not
> benchmarked it, and frankly, speed is of little concern here: I'm after
> elegance.
>
> Anyway, I figured that:
> A) someone else must have done this already

Yup. The following will do an entire document at once:

---
def wordwrap(text, width):
  i=0
  while i<len(text):
    if i+width+1>len(text):
      i=len(text)
    else:
      findnl=string.find(text, '\n', i)
      findspc=string.rfind(text, ' ', i, i+width+1)
      if findspc!=-1:
        if findnl!=-1 and findnl<findspc:
          i=findnl+1
        else:
          text=text[:findspc]+'\n'+text[findspc+1:]
          i=findspc+1
      else:
        findspc=string.find(text, ' ', i)
        if findspc!=-1:
          text=text[:findspc]+'\n'+text[findspc+1:]
          i=findspc+1
  return text
---

-- 
Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams  <ignacio at openservices.net>