mpegman has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

I am fairly new to perl and have run into a problem. On my site i have a message board simular to the chatterbox here, were they can post their thoughts. Sometimes the user post a very long word which skrews up the tables. I was wondering if it is possible to split a word into 30 character segments if it is longer than 30 characters. Thanks in advance.
-Thomas

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Splitting A Word?
by suaveant (Parson) on Jul 06, 2001 at 23:00 UTC
    Look at Damian Conway's Text::Autoformat It probably does what you want, or Text::Wrapper

    Update The regexps work... the modules are a little more robust...

                    - Ant

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Re: Splitting A Word?
by lhoward (Vicar) on Jul 06, 2001 at 23:00 UTC
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[d/l]
Re: Splitting A Word?
by dvergin (Monsignor) on Jul 06, 2001 at 23:30 UTC
    Actually,   s/(\S{30})(\S)/$1 $2/g   flubbs and gives you 31 characters in the 2nd and following chunks of a really long 'word' unless you do: 1 while $msg =~ s/(\S{30})(\S)/$1 $2/; ...omitting the trailing '/g'.

    So this would be a nice place to use a zero-width positive look-ahead assertion: $msg =~ s/(\S{30})(?=\S)/$1 /g;

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Re: Splitting A Word?
by tachyon (Chancellor) on Jul 06, 2001 at 23:50 UTC

    This will do the trick 

    $input = "
1234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890
+ 
1234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890
+ 
1234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890
+ 
1234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890
+ 
";

# do the magic with a snazzy regex

$input =~ s[(\S+)]          # grab the words into $1
{    
   local $_ = $1;           # assign word to $_
   if (length $1>30) {      # if word to long
       s/(.{30})/$1 /g;     # add spaces every 30 char
   }
   $_;                      # substitute in $_ for word
                            # it may or may not have changed
}gex;                       # global, execute, comments

print $input;

    [download]

    Note I have assumed that the words are any consecutive non whitespace chars

    cheers

    tachyon

    s&&rsenoyhcatreve&&&s&n.+t&"$'$`$\"$\&"&ee&&y&srve&&d&&print

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Re: Splitting A Word?
by damian1301 (Curate) on Jul 06, 2001 at 23:07 UTC
    You could just set the table width to a certain amount and that way the table will never change and it will wrap the text automatically... 

    $_.=($=+(6<<1));print(chr(my$a=$_));$^H=$_+$_;$_=$^H;
print chr($_-39); # Easy but its ok.

    [download]
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[d/l]

      no, usually the browser will expand the table to fit the text in it if there are really long words. that's the problem mpegman seems to be having. eg,

      <table width="2" border="1">
<tr><td>looooooooooooooong</td></tr>
</table>

      [download]

      gives you:

      looooooooooooooong

      certainly not 2 pixels wide.

      if you're working on a more liquid layout, you could modify one of the regexps given to substitute in a <wbr /> tag instead of a space. that tells the browser that if it needs to wrap text, that's a good spot to do it in. but if it doesn't need to wrap the text, you won't end up with a space in the middle of the word.

      anders pearson

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        Oh really? Well, that is because it won't break the word for you. If you explicity state it's length (and restrict the use of <nobr>) then it will wrap on words. Eg. 
        <table width="2" border="2">
<tr><td>yeah I am dave and blah blah blah blah blha</td></tr></table>

        [download]
        which produces.
        yeah I am dave and blah blah blah blah blha


        $_.=($=+(6<<1));print(chr(my$a=$_));$^H=$_+$_;$_=$^H;
print chr($_-39); # Easy but its ok.

        [download]
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Re: Splitting A Word?
by Anonymous Monk on Jul 06, 2001 at 23:01 UTC
    s/(\w{30})/$1 /g;
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[d/l]

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