Python Textwrap - forcing 'hard' breaks
- by Tom Werner
I am trying to use textwrap to format an import file that is quite particular in how it is formatted. Basically, it is as follows (line length shortened for simplicity):
abcdef <- Ok line
abcdef
ghijk <- Note leading space to indicate wrapped line
lm
Now, I have got code to work as follows:
wrapper = TextWrapper(width=80, subsequent_indent=' ', break_long_words=True, break_on_hyphens=False)
for l in lines:
wrapline=wrapper.wrap(l)
This works nearly perfectly, however, the text wrapping code doesn't do a hard break at the 80 character mark, it tries to be smart and break on a space (at approx 20 chars in).
I have got round this by replacing all spaces in the string list with a unique character (#), wrapping them and then removing the character, but surely there must be a cleaner way?
N.B Any possible answers need to work on Python 2.4 - sorry!
