CODEWITHSUNDEEP
javascriptstringreplacesplit
Matt Campbell
Matt Campbell

Reputation: 2227

Split a text to add a new line every n characters taking care of spaces

Common problem when writing text for alert and confirm dialogs: number of characters to type before adding a newline character. Some browsers auto-break at one point, others at others. So you are left guessing. Useful snippet is a Javascript function that takes as input the alert or confirm dialog's intended text and a char length, then returns the same input string only with new line chars added at the positions with spaces closest to the char length passed in. That way, words are not broken up mid-way.

Example:
1. Assign a var to a string of text you want to use for the alert or confirm dialog box, eg.:
var a = "My dog has fleas the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog etc";
2. Run the text through the function, for example:
a = breakLines(a); // Default, break every 50 chars
or
a = breakLines(a, 20); // Break every 20 chars

Display the value of 'a' after running it through the function and you will see line breaks have been added at every place you specified at the space character closest to the character place you specified. For example if you specified 20, 'a' would be converted to the following:

'My dog has fleas\nthe quick brown fox\njumps over the lazy\ndog etc'

For each line in the string (a line is a portion of the string ending in a new line character), the line is trimmed of whitespace on both sides. The code snippet below uses the jQuery $.trim() function to do this but there are other ways to do so without using the jQuery library, such as with regexp. Just modify the code as you want to to use alternate means.

This leads to my question: Aside from doing what I want to do the way I have done it as shown below, is there an easier more compact way of doing it, something that for example can leverage regexp? Any takers?

function breakLines(text, linelength)
{
 var linebreak = '\n';
 var counter = 0;
 var line = '';
 var returntext = '';
 var bMatchFound = false;
 var linelen = 50; // 50 characters per line is default

 if(linelength)
 {
  linelen = linelength;
 }

 if(!text){ return '';}
 if(text.length < linelen+1) { return $.trim(text);}

 while(counter < text.length)
 {
  line = text.substr(counter,linelen);
  bMatchFound = false;
  if (line.length == linelen)
  {
   for(var i=line.length;i > -1;i--)
   {
    if(line.substr(i,1)==' ')
    {
     counter += line.substr(0,i).length;
     line = $.trim(line.substr(0,i)) + linebreak;
     returntext += line;
     bMatchFound = true;
     break;
    }
   }

   if(!bMatchFound)
   {
    counter+=line.length;
    line = $.trim(line) + linebreak;
    returntext += line;
   }
  }
  else
  {
   returntext += $.trim(line);
   break; // We're breaking out of the the while(), not the for()
  }
 }

 return returntext;
}

Upvotes: 6

Views: 10352

Answers (4)

nander
nander

Reputation: 1

This function is recursive and a lot more simple. It also deals with newlines already being in the text. It's short and without loops. 

function explode (text, max) {
        if (text == null) return '';
    if (text.length <= max) return text;
    const nextNewLine = /\n/.exec(text);

    const lineLength = nextNewLine ? nextNewLine.index: text.length;
    if (lineLength <=  max) {
        const line = text.substr(0, lineLength);
        const rest = text.substr(lineLength+1);
        return line + '\n'+  explode(rest, max);
    } else {
        let line = text.substr(0, max);
        let rest = text.substr(max);

        const res = (/([\s])[^\s]*$/.exec(line));
        if(res){ //
            line = text.substr(0, res.index);
            rest = text.substr(res.index+1);
        } else {
            line = line + "-";
        }
        return line + '\n'+  explode(rest, max);
    }
}

Upvotes: -1

Suprido
Suprido

Reputation: 533

Short version with no params validation

function explode(str, maxLength) {
    var buff = "";
    var numOfLines = Math.floor(str.length/maxLength);
    for(var i = 0; i<numOfLines+1; i++) {
        buff += str.substr(i*maxLength, maxLength); if(i !== numOfLines) { buff += "\n"; }
    }
    return buff;
}

Upvotes: 4

Bergi
Bergi

Reputation: 665040

This should do it:

function breaklines(str, n) {
    var lines = str.split(/\s+/), // explode on whitespaces
        n = +n || 50;
    var res = [];
    for (var i=0; i<lines.length; ) {
        for (var l = 0, line = []; l + lines[i].length <= n; i++) {
            l += 1 + lines[i].length;
            line.push(lines[i]);
        }
        res.push(line.join(" "));
    }
    return res.join("\n");
}

Upvotes: -1

Vincent Thibault
Vincent Thibault

Reputation: 611

Maybe ?

function breadLines( str, len )
{
    var len = len || 50, i, j, lines, count, lineBreak = '\n', out = [];

    if ( str.length < len )
        return str;

    lines = str.split(/\s+/);

    for ( i=0, j=0, count=lines.length; i<count; i++ )
    {
        if ( ( out[j] + lines[i] ).length > len )
            j++, out.push("");

        out[j] += lines[i];
    }

    return out.join(lineBreak);
}

Upvotes: 0

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