TextWrap::TextWrapper Class Reference

## Public Member Functions

list | _split (string text)
string | fill (string text)
| Fill a single paragraph of text, returning a new string. More...
list | wrap (string text)
| Wrap a single paragraph of text, returning a list of wrapped lines. More...

## Private Member Functions

| _fix_sentence_endings (reference chunks)
| _handle_long_word (reference reversed_chunks, reference cur_line, int cur_len, int width)
string | _munge_whitespace (string text)
list | _wrap_chunks (list chunks)

## Detailed Description

Object for wrapping/filling text. The public interface consists of the wrap() and fill() methods; the other methods are just there for subclasses to override in order to tweak the default behaviour. If you want to completely replace the main wrapping algorithm, you'll probably have to override _wrap_chunks().

Several instance attributes control various aspects of wrapping:

- `width` (default: 70)
  the maximum width of wrapped lines (unless break_long_words is false)
- `initial_indent` (default: "")
  string that will be prepended to the first line of wrapped output. Counts towards the line's width.
- `subsequent_indent` (default: "")
  string that will be prepended to all lines save the first of wrapped output; also counts towards each line's width.
- `expand_tabs` (default: true)
  Expand tabs in input text to spaces before further processing. Each tab will become 0 .. 'tabsize' spaces, depending on its position in its line. If false, each tab is treated as a single character.
- `tabsize` (default: 8)
  Expand tabs in input text to 0 .. 'tabsize' spaces, unless 'expand_tabs' is false.
- `replace_whitespace` (default: true)
  Replace all whitespace characters in the input text by spaces after tab expansion. Note that if expand_tabs is false and replace_whitespace is true, every tab will be converted to a single space!
- `fix_sentence_endings` (default: false)
  Ensure that sentence-ending punctuation is always followed by two spaces. Off by default because the algorithm is (unavoidably) imperfect.
- `break_long_words` (default: true)
  Break words longer than 'width'. If false, those words will not be broken, and some lines might be longer than 'width'.
- `break_on_hyphens` (default: true)
  Allow breaking hyphenated words. If true, wrapping will occur preferably on whitespaces and right after hyphens part of compound words.
- `drop_whitespace` (default: true)
  Drop leading and trailing whitespace from lines.
- `max_lines` (default: None)
  Truncate wrapped lines.
- `placeholder` (default: ' [...]')
  Append to the last line of truncated text.

## Member Function Documentation

## _fix_sentence_endings()

TextWrap::TextWrapper::_fix_sentence_endings | ( | reference | chunks | ) |

private

_fix_sentence_endings (chunks : [string])

Correct for sentence endings buried in 'chunks'. Eg. when the original text contains "... foo.\nBar ...", munge_whitespace() and split() will convert that to [..., "foo.", " ", "Bar", ...] which has one too few spaces; this method simply changes the one space to two.

## _handle_long_word()

TextWrap::TextWrapper::_handle_long_word | ( | reference | reversed_chunks,
|  | reference | cur_line,
|  | int | cur_len,
|  | int | width
| ) |  |

private

_handle_long_word (chunks : [string], cur_line : [string], cur_len : int, width : int)

Handle a chunk of text (most likely a word, not whitespace) that is too long to fit in any line.

## _munge_whitespace()

string TextWrap::TextWrapper::_munge_whitespace | ( | string | text | ) |

private

_munge_whitespace (text : string) -> string

Munge whitespace in text: expand tabs and convert all other whitespace characters to spaces. Eg. " foo\tbar\n\nbaz" becomes " foo bar baz".

## _split()

list TextWrap::TextWrapper::_split | ( | string | text | ) |

_split (text : string) -> [string]

Split the text to wrap into indivisible chunks. Chunks are not quite the same as words; see _wrap_chunks() for full details. As an example, the text:

Look, goof-ball – use the -b option!

breaks into the following chunks:

'Look,', ' ', 'goof-', 'ball', ' ', '–', ' ', 'use', ' ', 'the', ' ', '-b', ' ', 'option!'

if break_on_hyphens is True, or in:

'Look,', ' ', 'goof-ball', ' ', '–', ' ', 'use', ' ', 'the', ' ', '-b', ' ', option!'

otherwise.

Note
  This is a non-public interface that may change at any point in the future (!)

## _wrap_chunks()

list TextWrap::TextWrapper::_wrap_chunks | ( | list | chunks | ) |

private

_wrap_chunks (chunks : [string]) -> [string]

Wrap a sequence of text chunks and return a list of lines of length 'self.width' or less. (If 'break_long_words' is false, some lines may be longer than this.) Chunks correspond roughly to words and the whitespace between them: each chunk is indivisible (modulo 'break_long_words'), but a line break can come between any two chunks. Chunks should not have internal whitespace; ie. a chunk is either all whitespace or a "word". Whitespace chunks will be removed from the beginning and end of lines, but apart from that whitespace is preserved.

## fill()

string TextWrap::TextWrapper::fill | ( | string | text | ) |

Fill a single paragraph of text, returning a new string.

fill (text : string) -> string

Reformat the single paragraph in 'text' to fit in lines of no more than 'self.width' columns, and return a new string containing the entire wrapped paragraph.

## wrap()

list TextWrap::TextWrapper::wrap | ( | string | text | ) |

Wrap a single paragraph of text, returning a list of wrapped lines.

wrap (text : string) -> [string]

Reformat the single paragraph in 'text' so it fits in lines of no more than 'self.width' columns, and return a list of wrapped lines. Tabs in 'text' are expanded with expandtabs(), and all other whitespace characters (including newline) are converted to space.