cpython/Doc/library/textwrap.rst

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:mod:`textwrap` --- Text wrapping and filling
=============================================
.. module:: textwrap
:synopsis: Text wrapping and filling
.. moduleauthor:: Greg Ward <gward@python.net>
.. sectionauthor:: Greg Ward <gward@python.net>
**Source code:** :source:`Lib/textwrap.py`
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--------------
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The :mod:`textwrap` module provides two convenience functions, :func:`wrap` and
:func:`fill`, as well as :class:`TextWrapper`, the class that does all the work,
and a utility function :func:`dedent`. If you're just wrapping or filling one
or two text strings, the convenience functions should be good enough;
otherwise, you should use an instance of :class:`TextWrapper` for efficiency.
.. function:: wrap(text, width=70, **kwargs)
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Wraps the single paragraph in *text* (a string) so every line is at most
*width* characters long. Returns a list of output lines, without final
newlines.
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Optional keyword arguments correspond to the instance attributes of
:class:`TextWrapper`, documented below. *width* defaults to ``70``.
.. function:: fill(text, width=70, **kwargs)
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Wraps the single paragraph in *text*, and returns a single string containing the
wrapped paragraph. :func:`fill` is shorthand for ::
"\n".join(wrap(text, ...))
In particular, :func:`fill` accepts exactly the same keyword arguments as
:func:`wrap`.
Both :func:`wrap` and :func:`fill` work by creating a :class:`TextWrapper`
instance and calling a single method on it. That instance is not reused, so for
applications that wrap/fill many text strings, it will be more efficient for you
to create your own :class:`TextWrapper` object.
Merged revisions 62998-63003,63005-63006,63009-63012,63014-63017,63019-63020,63022-63024,63026-63029,63031-63041,63043-63045,63047-63054,63056-63062 via svnmerge from svn+ssh://pythondev@svn.python.org/python/trunk ........ r62998 | andrew.kuchling | 2008-05-10 15:51:55 -0400 (Sat, 10 May 2008) | 7 lines #1858 from Tarek Ziade: Allow multiple repositories in .pypirc; see http://wiki.python.org/moin/EnhancedPyPI for discussion. The patch is slightly revised from Tarek's last patch: I've simplified the PyPIRCCommand.finalize_options() method to not look at sys.argv. Tests still pass. ........ r63000 | alexandre.vassalotti | 2008-05-10 15:59:16 -0400 (Sat, 10 May 2008) | 5 lines Cleaned up io._BytesIO.write(). I am amazed that the old code, for inserting null-bytes, actually worked. Who wrote that thing? Oh, it is me... doh. ........ r63002 | brett.cannon | 2008-05-10 16:52:01 -0400 (Sat, 10 May 2008) | 2 lines Revert r62998 as it broke the build (seems distutils.config is missing). ........ r63014 | andrew.kuchling | 2008-05-10 18:12:38 -0400 (Sat, 10 May 2008) | 1 line #1858: add distutils.config module ........ r63027 | brett.cannon | 2008-05-10 21:09:32 -0400 (Sat, 10 May 2008) | 2 lines Flesh out the 3.0 deprecation to suggest using the ctypes module. ........ r63028 | skip.montanaro | 2008-05-10 22:59:30 -0400 (Sat, 10 May 2008) | 4 lines Copied two versions of the example from the interactive session. Delete one. ........ r63037 | georg.brandl | 2008-05-11 03:02:17 -0400 (Sun, 11 May 2008) | 2 lines reload() takes the module itself. ........ r63038 | alexandre.vassalotti | 2008-05-11 03:06:04 -0400 (Sun, 11 May 2008) | 4 lines Added test framework for handling module renames. Factored the import guard in test_py3kwarn.TestStdlibRemovals into a context manager, namely test_support.CleanImport. ........ r63039 | georg.brandl | 2008-05-11 03:06:05 -0400 (Sun, 11 May 2008) | 2 lines #2742: ``''`` is not converted to NULL in getaddrinfo. ........ r63040 | alexandre.vassalotti | 2008-05-11 03:08:12 -0400 (Sun, 11 May 2008) | 2 lines Fixed typo in a comment of test_support.CleanImport. ........ r63041 | alexandre.vassalotti | 2008-05-11 03:10:25 -0400 (Sun, 11 May 2008) | 2 lines Removed a dead line of code. ........ r63043 | georg.brandl | 2008-05-11 04:47:53 -0400 (Sun, 11 May 2008) | 2 lines #2812: document property.getter/setter/deleter. ........ r63049 | georg.brandl | 2008-05-11 05:06:30 -0400 (Sun, 11 May 2008) | 2 lines #1153769: document PEP 237 changes to string formatting. ........ r63050 | georg.brandl | 2008-05-11 05:11:40 -0400 (Sun, 11 May 2008) | 2 lines #2809: elaborate str.split docstring a bit. ........ r63051 | georg.brandl | 2008-05-11 06:13:59 -0400 (Sun, 11 May 2008) | 2 lines Fix typo. ........ r63052 | georg.brandl | 2008-05-11 06:33:27 -0400 (Sun, 11 May 2008) | 2 lines #2709: clarification. ........ r63053 | georg.brandl | 2008-05-11 06:42:28 -0400 (Sun, 11 May 2008) | 2 lines #2659: add ``break_on_hyphens`` to TextWrapper. ........ r63057 | georg.brandl | 2008-05-11 06:59:39 -0400 (Sun, 11 May 2008) | 2 lines #2741: clarification of value range for address_family. ........ r63058 | georg.brandl | 2008-05-11 07:09:35 -0400 (Sun, 11 May 2008) | 2 lines #2452: timeout is used for all blocking operations. ........ r63059 | andrew.kuchling | 2008-05-11 09:33:56 -0400 (Sun, 11 May 2008) | 2 lines #1792: Improve performance of marshal.dumps() on large objects by increasing the size of the buffer more quickly. ........ r63060 | andrew.kuchling | 2008-05-11 10:00:00 -0400 (Sun, 11 May 2008) | 1 line #1858: re-apply patch for this, adding the missing files ........ r63061 | benjamin.peterson | 2008-05-11 10:13:25 -0400 (Sun, 11 May 2008) | 2 lines Add the "until" command to pdb ........ r63062 | georg.brandl | 2008-05-11 10:17:13 -0400 (Sun, 11 May 2008) | 2 lines Add some sentence endings. ........
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Text is preferably wrapped on whitespaces and right after the hyphens in
hyphenated words; only then will long words be broken if necessary, unless
:attr:`TextWrapper.break_long_words` is set to false.
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An additional utility function, :func:`dedent`, is provided to remove
indentation from strings that have unwanted whitespace to the left of the text.
.. function:: dedent(text)
Remove any common leading whitespace from every line in *text*.
This can be used to make triple-quoted strings line up with the left edge of the
display, while still presenting them in the source code in indented form.
Note that tabs and spaces are both treated as whitespace, but they are not
equal: the lines ``" hello"`` and ``"\thello"`` are considered to have no
common leading whitespace.
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For example::
def test():
# end first line with \ to avoid the empty line!
s = '''\
hello
world
'''
print(repr(s)) # prints ' hello\n world\n '
print(repr(dedent(s))) # prints 'hello\n world\n'
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.. class:: TextWrapper(**kwargs)
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The :class:`TextWrapper` constructor accepts a number of optional keyword
arguments. Each keyword argument corresponds to an instance attribute, so
for example ::
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wrapper = TextWrapper(initial_indent="* ")
is the same as ::
wrapper = TextWrapper()
wrapper.initial_indent = "* "
You can re-use the same :class:`TextWrapper` object many times, and you can
change any of its options through direct assignment to instance attributes
between uses.
The :class:`TextWrapper` instance attributes (and keyword arguments to the
constructor) are as follows:
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.. attribute:: width
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(default: ``70``) The maximum length of wrapped lines. As long as there
are no individual words in the input text longer than :attr:`width`,
:class:`TextWrapper` guarantees that no output line will be longer than
:attr:`width` characters.
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.. attribute:: expand_tabs
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(default: ``True``) If true, then all tab characters in *text* will be
expanded to spaces using the :meth:`expandtabs` method of *text*.
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.. attribute:: replace_whitespace
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(default: ``True``) If true, each whitespace character (as defined by
``string.whitespace``) remaining after tab expansion will be replaced by a
single space.
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.. note::
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If :attr:`expand_tabs` is false and :attr:`replace_whitespace` is true,
each tab character will be replaced by a single space, which is *not*
the same as tab expansion.
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.. note::
If :attr:`replace_whitespace` is false, newlines may appear in the
middle of a line and cause strange output. For this reason, text should
be split into paragraphs (using :meth:`str.splitlines` or similar)
which are wrapped separately.
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.. attribute:: drop_whitespace
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(default: ``True``) If true, whitespace that, after wrapping, happens to
end up at the beginning or end of a line is dropped (leading whitespace in
the first line is always preserved, though).
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.. attribute:: initial_indent
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(default: ``''``) String that will be prepended to the first line of
wrapped output. Counts towards the length of the first line.
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.. attribute:: subsequent_indent
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(default: ``''``) String that will be prepended to all lines of wrapped
output except the first. Counts towards the length of each line except
the first.
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.. attribute:: fix_sentence_endings
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(default: ``False``) If true, :class:`TextWrapper` attempts to detect
sentence endings and ensure that sentences are always separated by exactly
two spaces. This is generally desired for text in a monospaced font.
However, the sentence detection algorithm is imperfect: it assumes that a
sentence ending consists of a lowercase letter followed by one of ``'.'``,
``'!'``, or ``'?'``, possibly followed by one of ``'"'`` or ``"'"``,
followed by a space. One problem with this is algorithm is that it is
unable to detect the difference between "Dr." in ::
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[...] Dr. Frankenstein's monster [...]
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and "Spot." in ::
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[...] See Spot. See Spot run [...]
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:attr:`fix_sentence_endings` is false by default.
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Since the sentence detection algorithm relies on ``string.lowercase`` for
the definition of "lowercase letter," and a convention of using two spaces
after a period to separate sentences on the same line, it is specific to
English-language texts.
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.. attribute:: break_long_words
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(default: ``True``) If true, then words longer than :attr:`width` will be
broken in order to ensure that no lines are longer than :attr:`width`. If
it is false, long words will not be broken, and some lines may be longer
than :attr:`width`. (Long words will be put on a line by themselves, in
order to minimize the amount by which :attr:`width` is exceeded.)
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Merged revisions 62998-63003,63005-63006,63009-63012,63014-63017,63019-63020,63022-63024,63026-63029,63031-63041,63043-63045,63047-63054,63056-63062 via svnmerge from svn+ssh://pythondev@svn.python.org/python/trunk ........ r62998 | andrew.kuchling | 2008-05-10 15:51:55 -0400 (Sat, 10 May 2008) | 7 lines #1858 from Tarek Ziade: Allow multiple repositories in .pypirc; see http://wiki.python.org/moin/EnhancedPyPI for discussion. The patch is slightly revised from Tarek's last patch: I've simplified the PyPIRCCommand.finalize_options() method to not look at sys.argv. Tests still pass. ........ r63000 | alexandre.vassalotti | 2008-05-10 15:59:16 -0400 (Sat, 10 May 2008) | 5 lines Cleaned up io._BytesIO.write(). I am amazed that the old code, for inserting null-bytes, actually worked. Who wrote that thing? Oh, it is me... doh. ........ r63002 | brett.cannon | 2008-05-10 16:52:01 -0400 (Sat, 10 May 2008) | 2 lines Revert r62998 as it broke the build (seems distutils.config is missing). ........ r63014 | andrew.kuchling | 2008-05-10 18:12:38 -0400 (Sat, 10 May 2008) | 1 line #1858: add distutils.config module ........ r63027 | brett.cannon | 2008-05-10 21:09:32 -0400 (Sat, 10 May 2008) | 2 lines Flesh out the 3.0 deprecation to suggest using the ctypes module. ........ r63028 | skip.montanaro | 2008-05-10 22:59:30 -0400 (Sat, 10 May 2008) | 4 lines Copied two versions of the example from the interactive session. Delete one. ........ r63037 | georg.brandl | 2008-05-11 03:02:17 -0400 (Sun, 11 May 2008) | 2 lines reload() takes the module itself. ........ r63038 | alexandre.vassalotti | 2008-05-11 03:06:04 -0400 (Sun, 11 May 2008) | 4 lines Added test framework for handling module renames. Factored the import guard in test_py3kwarn.TestStdlibRemovals into a context manager, namely test_support.CleanImport. ........ r63039 | georg.brandl | 2008-05-11 03:06:05 -0400 (Sun, 11 May 2008) | 2 lines #2742: ``''`` is not converted to NULL in getaddrinfo. ........ r63040 | alexandre.vassalotti | 2008-05-11 03:08:12 -0400 (Sun, 11 May 2008) | 2 lines Fixed typo in a comment of test_support.CleanImport. ........ r63041 | alexandre.vassalotti | 2008-05-11 03:10:25 -0400 (Sun, 11 May 2008) | 2 lines Removed a dead line of code. ........ r63043 | georg.brandl | 2008-05-11 04:47:53 -0400 (Sun, 11 May 2008) | 2 lines #2812: document property.getter/setter/deleter. ........ r63049 | georg.brandl | 2008-05-11 05:06:30 -0400 (Sun, 11 May 2008) | 2 lines #1153769: document PEP 237 changes to string formatting. ........ r63050 | georg.brandl | 2008-05-11 05:11:40 -0400 (Sun, 11 May 2008) | 2 lines #2809: elaborate str.split docstring a bit. ........ r63051 | georg.brandl | 2008-05-11 06:13:59 -0400 (Sun, 11 May 2008) | 2 lines Fix typo. ........ r63052 | georg.brandl | 2008-05-11 06:33:27 -0400 (Sun, 11 May 2008) | 2 lines #2709: clarification. ........ r63053 | georg.brandl | 2008-05-11 06:42:28 -0400 (Sun, 11 May 2008) | 2 lines #2659: add ``break_on_hyphens`` to TextWrapper. ........ r63057 | georg.brandl | 2008-05-11 06:59:39 -0400 (Sun, 11 May 2008) | 2 lines #2741: clarification of value range for address_family. ........ r63058 | georg.brandl | 2008-05-11 07:09:35 -0400 (Sun, 11 May 2008) | 2 lines #2452: timeout is used for all blocking operations. ........ r63059 | andrew.kuchling | 2008-05-11 09:33:56 -0400 (Sun, 11 May 2008) | 2 lines #1792: Improve performance of marshal.dumps() on large objects by increasing the size of the buffer more quickly. ........ r63060 | andrew.kuchling | 2008-05-11 10:00:00 -0400 (Sun, 11 May 2008) | 1 line #1858: re-apply patch for this, adding the missing files ........ r63061 | benjamin.peterson | 2008-05-11 10:13:25 -0400 (Sun, 11 May 2008) | 2 lines Add the "until" command to pdb ........ r63062 | georg.brandl | 2008-05-11 10:17:13 -0400 (Sun, 11 May 2008) | 2 lines Add some sentence endings. ........
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.. attribute:: break_on_hyphens
(default: ``True``) If true, wrapping will occur preferably on whitespaces
and right after hyphens in compound words, as it is customary in English.
If false, only whitespaces will be considered as potentially good places
for line breaks, but you need to set :attr:`break_long_words` to false if
you want truly insecable words. Default behaviour in previous versions
was to always allow breaking hyphenated words.
:class:`TextWrapper` also provides two public methods, analogous to the
module-level convenience functions:
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.. method:: wrap(text)
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Wraps the single paragraph in *text* (a string) so every line is at most
:attr:`width` characters long. All wrapping options are taken from
instance attributes of the :class:`TextWrapper` instance. Returns a list
of output lines, without final newlines.
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.. method:: fill(text)
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Wraps the single paragraph in *text*, and returns a single string
containing the wrapped paragraph.
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