Ubuntu Manpage: Text::Wrap - line wrapping to form simple paragraphs

NAME

       Text::Wrap - line wrapping to form simple paragraphs

SYNOPSIS

       Example 1

               use Text::Wrap;

               $initial_tab = "\t";    # Tab before first line
               $subsequent_tab = "";   # All other lines flush left

               print wrap($initial_tab, $subsequent_tab, @text);
               print fill($initial_tab, $subsequent_tab, @text);

               $lines = wrap($initial_tab, $subsequent_tab, @text);

               @paragraphs = fill($initial_tab, $subsequent_tab, @text);

       Example 2

               use Text::Wrap qw(wrap $columns $huge);

               $columns = 132;         # Wrap at 132 characters
               $huge = 'die';
               $huge = 'wrap';
               $huge = 'overflow';

       Example 3

               use Text::Wrap;

               $Text::Wrap::columns = 72;
               print wrap('', '', @text);

DESCRIPTION

       "Text::Wrap::wrap()" is a very simple paragraph formatter.  It formats a single paragraph
       at a time by breaking lines at word boundaries.  Indentation is controlled for the first
       line ($initial_tab) and all subsequent lines ($subsequent_tab) independently.  Please
       note: $initial_tab and $subsequent_tab are the literal strings that will be used: it is
       unlikely you would want to pass in a number.

       "Text::Wrap::fill()" is a simple multi-paragraph formatter.  It formats each paragraph
       separately and then joins them together when it's done.  It will destroy any whitespace in
       the original text.  It breaks text into paragraphs by looking for whitespace after a
       newline.  In other respects, it acts like wrap().

       "wrap()" compresses trailing whitespace into one newline, and "fill()" deletes all
       trailing whitespace.

       Both "wrap()" and "fill()" return a single string.

       Unlike the old Unix fmt(1) utility, this module correctly accounts for any Unicode
       combining characters (such as diacriticals) that may occur in each line for both expansion
       and unexpansion.  These are overstrike characters that do not increment the logical
       position.  Make sure you have the appropriate Unicode settings enabled.

OVERRIDES

"Text::Wrap::wrap()" has a number of variables that control its behavior. Because other
modules might be using "Text::Wrap::wrap()" it is suggested that you leave these variables
alone! If you can't do that, then use "local($Text::Wrap::VARIABLE) = YOURVALUE" when you
change the values so that the original value is restored. This "local()" trick will not
work if you import the variable into your own namespace.

Lines are wrapped at $Text::Wrap::columns columns (default value: 76).
$Text::Wrap::columns should be set to the full width of your output device. In fact,
every resulting line will have length of no more than "$columns - 1".

It is possible to control which characters terminate words by modifying
$Text::Wrap::break. Set this to a string such as '[\s:]' (to break before spaces or
colons) or a pre-compiled regexp such as "qr/[\s']/" (to break before spaces or
apostrophes). The default is simply '\s'; that is, words are terminated by spaces. (This
means, among other things, that trailing punctuation such as full stops or commas stay
with the word they are "attached" to.) Setting $Text::Wrap::break to a regular expression
that doesn't eat any characters (perhaps just a forward look-ahead assertion) will cause
warnings.

Beginner note: In example 2, above $columns is imported into the local namespace, and set
locally. In example 3, $Text::Wrap::columns is set in its own namespace without importing
it.

"Text::Wrap::wrap()" starts its work by expanding all the tabs in its input into spaces.
The last thing it does it to turn spaces back into tabs. If you do not want tabs in your
results, set $Text::Wrap::unexpand to a false value. Likewise if you do not want to use
8-character tabstops, set $Text::Wrap::tabstop to the number of characters you do want for
your tabstops.

If you want to separate your lines with something other than "\n" then set
$Text::Wrap::separator to your preference. This replaces all newlines with
$Text::Wrap::separator. If you just want to preserve existing newlines but add new breaks
with something else, set $Text::Wrap::separator2 instead.

When words that are longer than $columns are encountered, they are broken up. "wrap()"
adds a "\n" at column $columns. This behavior can be overridden by setting $huge to 'die'
or to 'overflow'. When set to 'die', large words will cause "die()" to be called. When
set to 'overflow', large words will be left intact.

Historical notes: 'die' used to be the default value of $huge. Now, 'wrap' is the default
value.

EXAMPLES

       Code:

         print wrap("\t","",<<END);
         This is a bit of text that forms
         a normal book-style indented paragraph
         END

       Result:

         "     This is a bit of text that forms
         a normal book-style indented paragraph
         "

       Code:

         $Text::Wrap::columns=20;
         $Text::Wrap::separator="|";
         print wrap("","","This is a bit of text that forms a normal book-style paragraph");

       Result:

         "This is a bit of|text that forms a|normal book-style|paragraph"

AUTHOR

       David Muir Sharnoff <cpan@dave.sharnoff.org> with help from Tim Pierce and many many
       others.

LICENSE

       Copyright (C) 1996-2009 David Muir Sharnoff.  Copyright (C) 2012-2013 Google, Inc.  This
       module may be modified, used, copied, and redistributed at your own risk.  Although
       allowed by the preceding license, please do not publicly redistribute modified versions of
       this code with the name "Text::Wrap" unless it passes the unmodified Text::Wrap test
       suite.