From: why the lucky stiff <ruby-talk@...>
Date: 2004-02-15T16:58:12+09:00
Subject: Re: method to WRAP text at _ # of characters?

Ruby Baby wrote:
> 
> Having taken PHP's "wordwrap" function for granted,
> (<http://us2.php.net/wordwrap>), I was surprised not to find
> a similar method built-in to Ruby.
> 

Here's a simple one I like to use:

   # Wrapping strings for display
   class String
     def wordwrap( len )
       gsub( /\n/, "\n\n" ).gsub( /(.{1,#{len}})(\s+|$)/, "\\1\n" )
     end
   end

   s = "Insert unwrapped and elaborate, exhaustive tomes here."
   s.wordwrap( 68 )
         #=> outputs string wrapped to 68 columns

However, the String#wordwrap method is rather limited, so if I ever end 
up needing something more, I use the Text::Format[1] module.

   require 'text/format'

   formatter = Text::Format.new {
     @columns = 68
     @first_indent = 0
   }

   s = "Insert unwrapped and elaborate, exhaustive tomes here."
   formatter.format( s )

Yip.

_why

[1] http://raa.ruby-lang.org/list.rhtml?name=text-format