How to split string preserving whole words?
I need to split long sentence into parts preserving whole words. Each part should have given maximum number of characters (including space, dots etc.). For example:
int partLenght = 35;
string sentence = "Silver badges are awarded for longer term goals. Silver badges are uncommon."
Output:
1 part: "Silver badges are awarded for"
2 part: "longer term goals. Silver badges are"
3 part: "uncommon."
Solution 1:
Try this:
static void Main(string[] args)
{
int partLength = 35;
string sentence = "Silver badges are awarded for longer term goals. Silver badges are uncommon.";
string[] words = sentence.Split(' ');
var parts = new Dictionary<int, string>();
string part = string.Empty;
int partCounter = 0;
foreach (var word in words)
{
if (part.Length + word.Length < partLength)
{
part += string.IsNullOrEmpty(part) ? word : " " + word;
}
else
{
parts.Add(partCounter, part);
part = word;
partCounter++;
}
}
parts.Add(partCounter, part);
foreach (var item in parts)
{
Console.WriteLine("Part {0} (length = {2}): {1}", item.Key, item.Value, item.Value.Length);
}
Console.ReadLine();
}
Solution 2:
I knew there had to be a nice LINQ-y way of doing this, so here it is for the fun of it:
var input = "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.";
var charCount = 0;
var maxLineLength = 11;
var lines = input.Split(' ', StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries)
.GroupBy(w => (charCount += w.Length + 1) / maxLineLength)
.Select(g => string.Join(" ", g));
// That's all :)
foreach (var line in lines) {
Console.WriteLine(line);
}
Obviously this code works only as long as the query is not parallel, since it depends on charCount
to be incremented "in word order".
Solution 3:
I've been testing Jon's and Lessan's answers, but they don't work properly if your max length needs to be absolute, rather than approximate. As their counter increments, it doesn't count the empty space left at the end of a line.
Running their code against the OP's example, you get:
1 part: "Silver badges are awarded for " - 29 Characters
2 part: "longer term goals. Silver badges are" - 36 Characters
3 part: "uncommon. " - 13 Characters
The "are" on line two, should be on line three. This happens because the counter does not include the 6 characters from the end of line one.
I came up with the following modification of Lessan's answer to account for this:
public static class ExtensionMethods
{
public static string[] Wrap(this string text, int max)
{
var charCount = 0;
var lines = text.Split(new[] { ' ' }, StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries);
return lines.GroupBy(w => (charCount += (((charCount % max) + w.Length + 1 >= max)
? max - (charCount % max) : 0) + w.Length + 1) / max)
.Select(g => string.Join(" ", g.ToArray()))
.ToArray();
}
}