in reply to highlight and line breaks

Add your markup first. Then use something like the following to add your "linebreaks" (which I gather are newlines from reading your problem description): 

s!((?:<span>|</span>|.){80})!$1\n!g;

[download]
That will allow you to treat your markup tags as a single character when trying to decide where to put your newlines. You may need the /s modifier to deal with existing newlines.

Edit: Fixed thinko. I meant /s rather than /m of course.

-sauoq
"My two cents aren't worth a dime.";

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Re: Re: highlight and line breaks
by glwtta (Hermit) on Jan 16, 2003 at 01:21 UTC
    this sounds more like the one-liner I was looking for, but the only problem is that a single character is not good enough, the tags have to be zero characters long for the wrapping purposes.

    thanks for all the great replies though, I am well impressed

[reply]
      the tags have to be zero characters long for the wrapping purposes.

      That's more difficult. I would probably do it like this: 

      $_ = "foo<span>bar</span>bazqux<span>quux</span>";

my $c=0;
s( (<span>|</span>|.) ) {
    my $s = $1;
    $s =~ m!</?span>! ? $s : $s . (++$c % 4 ? '' : "\n");
}sxge;

print;
print "\n";

      [download]

      That will show you how it works but in your case you'll need to change that '4' to '80' in the ++$c % 4 part.

      Update: added /s to regex so . would match "\n" as well.

      -sauoq
"My two cents aren't worth a dime.";
[reply]
[d/l]
[select]
        Not bad, but why try to match the tag again when you already let the engine match it before? 
        $_ = "foo<span>bar</span>bazqux<span>quux</span>";

my $c=0;
s( (<span>|</span>|(.)) ) {
    defined $2 ? $1 . (++$c % 4 ? '' : "\n") : $1;
}sxge;

print;
print "\n";

        [download]

        Makeshifts last the longest.

[reply]
[d/l]

        Assuming you never have an empty <span></span> set, I believe the following should work, should it not?

        s{((?:(?:<span>)?.(?:</span>)?){80})}{$1\n}g

        bbfu
        Black flowers blossum
        Fearless on my breath

[reply]
[d/l]

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