“Force wrap” c# function

By
Damien
– February 3, 2011Posted in: ASP.NET, C#

Sometimes on websites with user content you can find some design issues because of post/comment/anything posted by user in case this is a long string without spaces.
For example “Swimming*Skimboaring*AquaFitness*Snorkeling*Kayaking*Basketball*Archery*Volleyball*Soccer*Table Tennis*Mini Golf*Badminton*Rock Climbing* Kiteboarding*Fencing*Gymnastics*Yoga*Pilates*”
This string without whitespace can’t be wrapped.

For cases like this I’ve just written force wrap function. It is quite simple, using regular expressions.

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protected static string ForceWrap(string aStr,int max)
        {
            Regex LongLine = new Regex(@"(?<long>\S{"+max.ToString()+",})");
            MatchCollection matches = LongLine.Matches(aStr); // find all matches of "Long Strings" //
            if (matches.Count > 0)
            {
                StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder(aStr);
 
                for (int i = 0; i < matches.Count; i++)
                {
                    string s = matches[i].Groups["long"].Value;
                    string origS = s;
                    int segments = s.Length / max;
                    for (int j = 1; j < (segments+1); j++)
                    {
                        int pos = j * max + (j-1);
                        s = s.Insert( pos , " "); // Insert Space //
                    }
                    sb.Replace(origS, s);
                }
                aStr = sb.ToString();
            }
            return aStr;
        }

First parameter – the string you want to output, the second is max lenght is chars. Return value is new string with whitespace inserted if needed.
Hope this will help somebody.

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