From: Ezra Zygmuntowicz <ezra@...>
Date: 2005-09-15T03:17:28+09:00
Subject: Re: Quick and dirty word wrapping.


On Sep 14, 2005, at 7:59 AM, James Edward Gray II wrote:

> On Sep 14, 2005, at 9:48 AM, Gavin Kistner wrote:
>
>
>> On Sep 14, 2005, at 8:38 AM, James Edward Gray II wrote:
>>
>>
>>>> str.scan(/(.{1,30})(?:\s+|$)/)
>>>>
>>>>
>>> I'm still puzzling out how that works...
>>>
>>>
>>
>> Up to 30 characters, but there has to be whitespace after it (to  
>> keep it from splitting in the middle of the word) or be the very  
>> end of the string. The greedy regexp will grab all 30 if it can  
>> find them with whitespace after, otherwise it will backtrack until  
>> it finds the right spot.
>>
>
> I do understand the Regexp, but isn't that a look-ahead assertion  
> at the end?  That's not supposed to consume characters, right?  So  
> why doesn't the very next match start with the leading whitespace  
> that ended the last match?
>
> I know I just haven't got me head all the way around it yet.  I'm  
> working on it...  ;)
>
> James Edward Gray II
>
>

I have been using something extremely similar to add some tags to a  
text dump of the classified ads for my newspaper. Like this:

line = "<begad:11560454>Clinician PT front office, 50-60 hrs/mo. Send  
resumes to: www.omacime.com<endad>"

line.gsub!(/(<begad:[^>]+>)(.{1,50}.*?\b)/, "\\1<ftditm>\\2<\/ftditm>")

#=> "<begad:11560454><ftditm>Clinician PT front office, 50-60 hrs/mo.  
Send resumes</ftditm> to: www.omacime.com<endad>"

This takes a line and wraps the <ftditm></ftditm> tags around 50  
chars plus whatever is needed to make it to a whitespace char.


Cheers-

-Ezra Zygmuntowicz
Yakima Herald-Republic
WebMaster
509-577-7732
ezra@yakima-herald.com