From: Gavin Kistner <gavin@...>
Date: 2005-09-15T10:00:47+09:00
Subject: Re: Quick and dirty word wrapping.

On Sep 14, 2005, at 4:04 PM, David Tran wrote:
> Hmmm.... Here is my quick fix for him ...
>
> class String
>      def wrap_to( col_width )
>          str = self.gsub( /(\S{#{col_width}})(?=\S)/, '\1 ' )
>          str.scan(/(.{1,#{col_width}})(?:\s+|$)/).flatten.join( "\n" )
>      end
> end

Following feels like a good replacement for the existing Nano  
String#word_wrap method. Using gsub! (seen below) instead of  
scan.flatten.join (seen above) was a bit (but not much) faster. The  
non-destructive method can be re-written to be a hair faster by not  
relying on the destructive one, but it doesn't feel worth the DRY  
violation to do so.

class String
     def word_wrap( col_width=80 )
         self.dup.word_wrap!( col_width )
     end

     def word_wrap!( col_width=80 )
         self.gsub!( /(\S{#{col_width}})(?=\S)/, '\1 ' )
         self.gsub!( /(.{1,#{col_width}})(?:\s+|$)/, "\\1\n" )
         self
     end
end

The existing nano methods with these names do not properly deal with  
words or character sequences that are longer than the wrap width, so  
while these new methods are a little slower (3.03s vs. 2.35s) they  
are more correct. More testing should probably be done on speed  
optimizations and edge cases, though.