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**Category:** Rails\
**Created:** [November 8, 2006, 9:25am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/long-words-killing-html-display/75219 "2006-11-08T09:25:55Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1
**Author:**  [@samonderous](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/samonderous)\
**Post date:** [November 8, 2006, 9:25am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/long-words-killing-html-display/75219/1 "2006-11-08T09:25:55Z")
Hi, I’m trying to use word\_wrap to prevent long
‘aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa…’ from kill my display
tables in HTML. Problem is that word\_wrap doesn’t dissect these long
words and expects to only break them if it sees a ‘\n’. Does anybody
know if Rails has a helper to do this, not that it is hard to implement
on my own but jsut wondering if there’s something really clean that
takes care of this and anything more.
Thanks.
---
**Author:**  [@samonderous](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/samonderous)\
**Post date:** [November 8, 2006, 9:40am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/long-words-killing-html-display/75219/2 "2006-11-08T09:40:09Z")
Had the same problem so I wrote this method: put it into your helpers
and application.rb. There might be a cleaner way using Regexp or
scan… this uses String.split()
str = the string to split
len = longest length of each piece
char = character to split them with
# - split a long string into smaller pieces, at most “len” characters
# in length. “len” default is 10, if not supplied.
# - returns the split string
def split\_str(str=nil, len=10, char=" ")
len = 10 if len \< 1
work\_str = str.to\_s.split(//) if str
return\_str = “”
i = 0
if work\_str
work\_str.each do |s|
if (s == char || i == len)
return\_str += char
return\_str += s if s != char
i = 0
else
return\_str += s
i += 1
end
end
end
return\_str
end
---
**Author:**  [@samonderous](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/samonderous)\
**Post date:** [November 8, 2006, 4:09pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/long-words-killing-html-display/75219/3 "2006-11-08T16:09:31Z")
Hey, I said there’s probobly a better way to do it. Thanks Greg. I’ll
put your slimmed down version in.
Bart
---
**Author:**  [@samonderous](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/samonderous)\
**Post date:** [November 8, 2006, 2:55pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/long-words-killing-html-display/75219/4 "2006-11-08T14:55:12Z")
On Wed, Nov 08, 2006 at 12:37:32AM -0800, Bart wrote:
} Had the same problem so I wrote this method: put it into your helpers
} and application.rb. There might be a cleaner way using Regexp or
} scan… this uses String.split()
} str = the string to split
} len = longest length of each piece
[19 lines of code elided]
Shorter, cleaner, more efficient, whitespace-preserving, and uses the
HTML
wbr tag (which is a hint for word breaking and is supported well in FF
and
IE, though poorly in Safari and not at all in Opera):
def split\_str(str, len = 10)
fragment = /.{#{len}}/
str.split(/(\s+)/).map! { |word|
(/\s/ === word) ? word : word.gsub(fragment, ‘\0’)
}.join
end
Note that this will put a wbr tag at the end of words which have a
length
evenly divisible by len; these can be removed with another gsub if
desired,
but they are harmless. Note also that Rails does some annoying rewriting
of
HTML output, and changes into for no good reason. This
doesn’t affect how browsers render things, but it does mean the results
are
no longer XHTML-compliant.
–Greg