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.

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.