Textwrap
Textwrap is a small Rust crate for word wrapping text. You can use it to format strings for display in commandline applications. The crate name and interface is inspired by the Python textwrap module.
Usage
To use textwrap, add this to your Cargo.toml file:
[dependencies]
textwrap = "0.11"
This gives you the text wrapping without of the optional features listed next.
hyphenation
If you would like to have automatic language-sensitive hyphenation, enable the hyphenation feature:
[dependencies]
textwrap = { version = "0.11", features = ["hyphenation"] }
This gives you hyphenation support for US English. Please see the hyphenation example for an executable demo. Read the Getting Started section below to see how to load the hyphenation patterns for other languages.
terminal_size
To conveniently wrap text at the current terminal width, enable the terminal_size feature:
[dependencies]
textwrap = { version = "0.11", features = ["terminal_size"] }
Please see the termwidth example for how to use this feature.
Documentation
Getting Started
Word wrapping single strings is easy using the fill function:
fn main() {
let text = "textwrap: a small library for wrapping text.";
println!("{}", textwrap::fill(text, 18));
}
The output is
textwrap: a small
library for
wrapping text.
If you enable the hyphenation feature, you get support for automatic hyphenation for about 70 languages via high-quality TeX hyphenation patterns.
Your program must load the hyphenation pattern and call Wrapper::with_splitter to use it:
use hyphenation::{Language, Load, Standard};
use textwrap::Wrapper;
fn main() {
let hyphenator = Standard::from_embedded(Language::EnglishUS).unwrap();
let wrapper = Wrapper::with_splitter(18, hyphenator);
let text = "textwrap: a small library for wrapping text.";
println!("{}", wrapper.fill(text))
}
The output now looks like this:
textwrap: a small
library for wrap-
ping text.
The US-English hyphenation patterns are embedded when you enable the hyphenation feature. They are licensed under a permissive license and take up about 88 KB of space in your application. If you need hyphenation for other languages, you need to download a precompiled .bincode file and load it yourself. Please see the hyphenation documentation for details.
Examples
The library comes with some small example programs that shows various features.
Layout Example
The layout example shows how a fixed example string is wrapped at different widths. Run the example with:
$ cargo run --features hyphenation --example layout
The program will use the following string:
Memory safety without garbage collection. Concurrency without data races. Zero-cost abstractions.
The string is wrapped at all widths between 15 and 60 columns. With narrow columns the output looks like this:
.--- Width: 15 ---.
| Memory safety |
| without garbage |
| collection. |
| Concurrency |
| without data |
| races. Zero- |
| cost abstrac- |
| tions. |
.--- Width: 16 ----.
| Memory safety |
| without garbage |
| collection. Con- |
| currency without |
| data races. Ze- |
| ro-cost abstrac- |
| tions. |
Later, longer lines are used and the output now looks like this:
.-------------------- Width: 49 --------------------.
| Memory safety without garbage collection. Concur- |
| rency without data races. Zero-cost abstractions. |
.---------------------- Width: 53 ----------------------.
| Memory safety without garbage collection. Concurrency |
| without data races. Zero-cost abstractions. |
.------------------------- Width: 59 -------------------------.
| Memory safety without garbage collection. Concurrency with- |
| out data races. Zero-cost abstractions. |
Notice how words are split at hyphens (such as "zero-cost") but also how words are hyphenated using automatic/machine hyphenation.
Terminal Width Example
The termwidth example simply shows how the width can be set automatically to the current terminal width. Run it with this command:
$ cargo run --example termwidth
If you run it in a narrow terminal, you'll see output like this:
Formatted in within 60 columns:
----
Memory safety without garbage collection. Concurrency
without data races. Zero-cost abstractions.
----
If stdout is not connected to the terminal, the program will use a default of 80 columns for the width:
$ cargo run --example termwidth | cat
Formatted in within 80 columns:
----
Memory safety without garbage collection. Concurrency without data races. Zero-
cost abstractions.
----
Release History
This section lists the largest changes per release.
Unreleased
We now require the Rust 2018 edition. Over the years, we’ve repeatedly seen build failures in our CI, even when nothing changed in textwrap. The failures happened because we tested against a fixed version of Rust, but our dependencies kept releasing new patch it has versions that would push up the minimum required Rust version.
The build failures makes it infeasible to keep textwrap compatible with any particular version of Rust. We will therefore track the latest stable version of Rust from now on.
The term_size feature has been replaced by terminal_size. The API is unchanged, it is just the name of the Cargo feature that changed.
The hyphenation feature now only embeds the hyphenation patterns for US-English. This slims down the dependency.
- Fixed #177: Update examples to the 2018 edition.
Version 0.11.0 — December 9th, 2018
Due to our dependencies bumping their minimum supported version of Rust, the minimum version of Rust we test against is now 1.22.0.
- Merged #141: Fix
dedenthandling of empty lines and trailing newlines. Thanks @bbqsrc! - Fixed #151: Release of version with hyphenation 0.7.
Version 0.10.0 — April 28th, 2018
Due to our dependencies bumping their minimum supported version of Rust, the minimum version of Rust we test against is now 1.17.0.
- Fixed #99: Word broken even though it would fit on line.
- Fixed #107: Automatic hyphenation is off by one.
- Fixed #122: Take newlines into account when wrapping.
- Fixed #129: Panic on string with em-dash.
Version 0.9.0 — October 5th, 2017
The dependency on term_size is now optional, and by default this feature is not enabled. This is a breaking change for users of Wrapper::with_termwidth. Enable the term_size feature to restore the old functionality.
Added a regression test for the case where width is set to usize::MAX, thanks @Fraser999! All public structs now implement Debug, thanks @hcpl!
- Fixed #101: Make
term_sizean optional dependency.
Version 0.8.0 — September 4th, 2017
The Wrapper stuct is now generic over the type of word splitter being used. This means less boxing and a nicer API. The Wrapper::word_splitter method has been removed. This is a breaking API change if you used the method to change the word splitter.
The Wrapper struct has two new methods that will wrap the input text lazily: Wrapper::wrap_iter and Wrapper::into_wrap_iter. Use those if you will be iterating over the wrapped lines one by one.
Version 0.7.0 — July 20th, 2017
Version 0.7.0 changes the return type of Wrapper::wrap from Vec<String> to Vec<Cow<'a, str>>. This means that the output lines borrow data from the input string. This is a breaking API change if you relied on the exact return type of Wrapper::wrap. Callers of the textwrap::fill convenience function will see no breakage.
The above change and other optimizations makes version 0.7.0 roughly 15-30% faster than version 0.6.0.
The squeeze_whitespace option has been removed since it was complicating the above optimization. Let us know if this option is important for you so we can provide a work around.
Version 0.6.0 — May 22nd, 2017
Version 0.6.0 adds builder methods to Wrapper for easy one-line initialization and configuration:
let wrapper = Wrapper::new(60).break_words(false);
It also add a new NoHyphenation word splitter that will never split words, not even at existing hyphens.
- Fixed #28: Support not squeezing whitespace.
Version 0.5.0 — May 15th, 2017
Version 0.5.0 has breaking API changes. However, this only affects code using the hyphenation feature. The feature is now optional, so you will first need to enable the hyphenation feature as described above. Afterwards, please change your code from
wrapper.corpus = Some(&corpus);
to
wrapper.splitter = Box::new(corpus);
Other changes include optimizations, so version 0.5.0 is roughly 10-15% faster than version 0.4.0.
- Fixed #19: Add support for finding terminal size.
- Fixed #25: Handle words longer than
self.width. - Fixed #26: Support custom indentation.
- Fixed #36: Support building without
hyphenation. - Fixed #39: Respect non-breaking spaces.
Version 0.4.0 — January 24th, 2017
Documented complexities and tested these via cargo bench.
Version 0.3.0 — January 7th, 2017
Added support for automatic hyphenation.
Version 0.2.0 — December 28th, 2016
Introduced Wrapper struct. Added support for wrapping on hyphens.
Version 0.1.0 — December 17th, 2016
First public release with support for wrapping strings on whitespace.
License
Textwrap can be distributed according to the MIT license. Contributions will be accepted under the same license.
