Python - textwrap Example (wrap)

Textwrap. In Python code, the textwrap module provides wrapping for plain text. This can improve text files that are inconsistently wrapped.

Wrapping issues. In many text files, some lines are longer than others. With Python code, we can count characters and rewrap these lines.

Example. We must first include textwrap through an import statement at the top. Here we use a triple-quoted string to store some text.

Note We specify the optional argument width to the wrap method. By default, width is 70, but we want something a bit narrower.

Return The wrap method returns a list. We can loop over this list with a for-statement. We can manipulate or join the list.

String List

Finally In the output, we see the wrapped text. The longest line in it, the third line, is exactly 50 characters long.

import textwrap value = """The image in these opening lines evidently refers to a bird knocking itself out, in full flight, against the outer surface of a glass pane in which a mirrored sky, with its slightly darker tint and slightly slower cloud, presents the illusion of continued space.""" # Wrap this text. list = textwrap.wrap(value, width=50) # Print each line. for element in list: print(element)

The image in these opening lines evidently refers to a bird knocking itself out, in full flight, against the outer surface of a glass pane in which a mirrored sky, with its slightly darker tint and slightly slower cloud, presents the illusion of continued space.

Discussion. Other methods, such as fill() are helpful. This method does the same thing as textwrap.wrap except it returns the data joined into a single, newline-separated string.

Summary. With textwrap, we access effective text wrapping methods. With this helpful module we can often avoid writing our own line-breaking algorithms.

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This page was last updated on Jan 17, 2024 (grammar).

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