From: Chris Shea <cmshea@...>
Date: 2007-02-03T01:00:10+09:00
Subject: Re: halving a string

On Feb 2, 6:53 am, "Trans" <transf...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Feb 1, 11:30 pm, "Chris Shea" <cms...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> > On Feb 1, 9:20 pm, "Trans" <transf...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > On Feb 1, 11:10 pm, "Chris Shea" <cms...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > > I have a vacuum fluorescent display in my office, and I've been
> > > > messing around with it. Now that I've figured out how to communicate
> > > > with the serial connection it's time for some fun. Its shortcoming is
> > > > its 2 lines of 20 chars. So I naturally wrote a fortune cookie program
> > > > for it.
>
> > > > I want to make adding new fortunes easy (and without having to figure
> > > > out myself where to force a line break), so I basically need to split
> > > > a string (approximately) in half at a word boundary. This is what I
> > > > have:
>
> > > > class String
> > > >   def halve
> > > >     first_half = ''
> > > >     second_half = self
> > > >     until first_half.length >= length / 2
> > > >       match = / /.match(second_half)
> > > >       first_half << match.pre_match << ' '
> > > >       second_half = match.post_match
> > > >     end
> > > >     [first_half.strip, second_half]
> > > >   end
> > > > end
>
> > > > I have a feeling there's a one-line regexp that can do this. Am I
> > > > right? If not, is there a better way?
>
> > > untested but...
>
> > >   i = [0..str.size / 2].index(' ')
> > >   first_half, second_half = str[0...i], str[i..-1].strip
>
> > > however, you might just prefer
>
> > >   require 'facets/core/string/word_wrap'
> > >   str.word_wrap(20)
>
> > > T.
>
> > Tested, and failed. The index returns the position of the very first
> > space. (Also, it would have to be str[0..(str.size / 2)].index(' ')
> > but, still, it's no good).
>
> ah, size/2 has to be added to i, then it works.
>
> > Word wrapping is wrong for the occasion, as I'd like to split even
> > lines less than 20 chars, and have them of approximately equal length.
>
> not sure i understand, the size can be set, for example:
>
>   word_wrap(str.size/2)
>
> t.

I thought of that, but:

irb> str = "longlongword bit bits"
irb> puts str.word_wrap(str.size/2)
longlongwo
rd bit
bits
=> nil