# Can it be shorter?

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/can-it-be-shorter/78974>\
**Category:** Ruby\
**Created:** [December 11, 2006, 6:20am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/can-it-be-shorter/78974 "2006-12-11T06:20:54Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![WuyaSea\_O](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/w/ac8455/32.png) [@WuyaSea\_O](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/WuyaSea_O)\
**Post date:** [December 11, 2006, 6:20am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/can-it-be-shorter/78974/1 "2006-12-11T06:20:54Z")

</div>

doing formating, i need to break a long line of words to roughly 80  
chars per line, below is what I got

def break\_line(text)  
return text if text.size \< 80

```
i = text.index(' ', 79)
text[0..i] + "\n" + break_line(text[i+1..-1])

```

end

can it be any shorter, more rubyish? Thank you.

operator  
[www.wuyaSea.com](http://www.wuyaSea.com)

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![WuyaSea\_O](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/w/ac8455/32.png) [@WuyaSea\_O](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/WuyaSea_O)\
**Post date:** [December 11, 2006, 7:16am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/can-it-be-shorter/78974/2 "2006-12-11T07:16:57Z")

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WuyaSea O. wrote:

> can it be any shorter, more rubyish? Thank you.

“Shorter” is one issue, but you really don’t need to recurse to  
accomplish  
your goal, because the recursion technique should not be used where it  
is  
not needed. It is sometimes a temptation because it looks elegant and  
saves  
a few lines, but in this specific case, with a lot of text being pushed  
onto the stack, it may cause an overflow and terminate your program in  
the  
field, long after you have forgotten about it.

Also, you don’t want to use “index”, you want to use “rindex”, to find  
the  
last whitespace counting from the right, not the first whitespace  
counting  
from the left, which is what your code does.

Finally, test your code with paragraphs that don’t have any spaces in  
them  
– just long sequences of characters broken by linefeeds. This is a  
condition that isn’t likely, but the code should behave itself if this  
happens, e.g. not produce lines longer than 80 characters.

Sample code:

* * *

#!/usr/bin/ruby -w

def ljust(s,len)  
out = “”  
begin  
p = len  
p = s.rindex(/\s/,len) || len if(s.length \> len)  
out += s[0 … p].strip + “\n”  
s = s[p … -1]  
end while(s && s.length \> 0)  
out  
end

data = File.read(“sample.txt”)

data.each do |line|  
print ljust(line,80)  
end

* * *

Compare the output of this program with your own, and imagine there’s a  
requirement that no line be longer than 80 characters.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![WuyaSea\_O](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/w/ac8455/32.png) [@WuyaSea\_O](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/WuyaSea_O)\
**Post date:** [December 11, 2006, 2:59pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/can-it-be-shorter/78974/3 "2006-12-11T14:59:35Z")

</div>

On Dec 10, 2006, at 11:20 PM, WuyaSea O. wrote:

> can it be any shorter, more rubyish? Thank you.

def break\_line(text)  
text.gsub!(/(.{1,80}|\S{81,})(?: +|$\n?)/, “\1\n”)  
end

James Edward G. II

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![WuyaSea\_O](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/w/ac8455/32.png) [@WuyaSea\_O](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/WuyaSea_O)\
**Post date:** [December 11, 2006, 7:59am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/can-it-be-shorter/78974/4 "2006-12-11T07:59:00Z")

</div>

On Monday 11 December 2006 14:20, WuyaSea O. wrote:

> can it be any shorter, more rubyish? Thank you.

It’s not perfect, but well… just inviting all the regex-gurus to  
improve  
it 😉

^manveru

class String  
def linearize(max = 60)  
scan(/.{1,#{max}}(?=\s|$)/)  
end  
end

“The Lojban alphabet consists of the 26 characters”.linearize

# [“The Lojban alphabet consists of the 26 characters”]

“The Lojban alphabet consists of the 26 characters”.linearize 10

# [“The Lojban”, " alphabet", " consists", " of the 26", “characters”]

“The Lojban alphabet consists of the 26 characters”.linearize 20

# [“The Lojban alphabet”, " consists of the 26", " characters"]

“The Lojban alphabet consists of the 26 characters”.linearize 30

# [“The Lojban alphabet consists”, " of the 26 characters"]

“The Lojban alphabet consists of the 26 characters”.linearize 40

# [“The Lojban alphabet consists of the 26”, " characters"]