Word-wrap in Ruby

I spent a couple of hours this week making and releasing my very first Ruby gem. It is a really small and simple utility to word-wrap text files. That’s all what it can do and in fact, the simplicity plays a key role in it.

I implemented the wrapping code when I was migrating this website from Wordpress.com to Jekyll a couple of weeks ago. I will probably never use the original script that helped me convert the posts from HTML to Markdown, but I thought it would be a good idea to keep the wrapping algorithm so I can use it easily in the future. So I turned it to the word_wrap gem.

How it works

The gem is hosted on RubyGems.org, so you can get it using either bundler or installing it directly via:

$ gem install word_wrap

In the command line

After installing it, you’ll able to use the ww program. It’s interface is very simple. You can pass a file to be word-wrapped either via an argument or the standard input. In both cases, the result will be written to stdout. You can specify the maximum width via the -w parameter (the default width is set to 80) and you can also enable exact fit (described below) by passing the -f flag. A few examples follow.

$ cat hip.txt
Forage Shoreditch disrupt Pitchfork meh.

Mustache 3 wolf moon gluten-free whatever master burn
vinyl.

$ ww -w20 hip.txt
Forage Shoreditch
disrupt Pitchfork
meh.

Mustache 3 wolf moon
gluten-free whatever
master burn
vinyl.

In Ruby

The Ruby interface is a bit more diverse, but just as simple. First, you will need to add the following require to your script.

require "word_wrap"

After that, the most convenient way of accessing this functionality is via the String class extensions #wrap and #fit. The former does wrapping only, the later one adds the exact fit (the difference is explained below). Again, a couple of example follow.

hip=<<EOF
Forage Shoreditch disrupt Pitchfork meh.

Mustache 3 wolf moon gluten-free whatever master burn
vinyl.
EOF

twenty = WordWrap.ww hip, 20
thirty = hip.wrap 30
fourty = hip.fit 40

Wrapping vs. fitting

We mentioned two slightly different approaches to wrapping that you can use – wrapping only and exact fit. The first one will only modify the lines that exceed the predefined paragraph width and leave all the others untouched. That works quite well, only in some cases, it may produce lines with single words on them.

$ cat sample.txt
Dreamcatcher +1 brunch, tofu Helvetica single-origin coffee
distillery trust fund lo-fi.

$ ww -w60 sample.txt
Dreamcatcher +1 brunch, tofu Helvetica single-origin
coffee
distillery trust fund lo-fi.

That doesn’t look good at all, so that’s why there is the other approach. Unfortunately, not even the exact fit is ideal. The problem with that one is that it modifies all the lines and if you’ll try to use it with code, it will most likely bugger up your white-space.

$ ww -w60 -f sample.txt
Dreamcatcher +1 brunch, tofu Helvetica single-origin
coffee distillery trust fund lo-fi.

To sum it up, if you work with unformatted plain-text only, you will get better results with exact fit. However, if your input contains code or any other text formatted with white-space, stick to the default one.

Summary

Making simple gems is awesome. They’re easy to build, and what’s more important – even easier to use. Sticking to the good-old ways of UNIX sometimes really pays off.

Anyway, if you would like to fix something or otherwise contribute to this gem, I’ll be more than happy to help you with that! The gem is licensed under the MIT license and hosted on Github.