Printing an ArrayList of Strings to a PrintWriter with word wrap

Question

Some classmates and I are working on a homework assignment for Java that requires we print an ArrayList of Strings to a PrintWriter using word wrap, so that none of the output passes 80 characters. We've extensively Googled this and can't find any Java API based way to do this.

I know it's generally "wrong" to ask a homework question on SO, but we're just looking for recommendations of the best way to do this, or if we missed something in the API. This isn't the major part of the homework, just a small output requirement.

Ideally, I'd like to be able to wordwrap the ArrayList's toString since it's nicely formatted already.

Answer 1

Well, this is a first for me, it's the first time one of my students has posted a question about one of the projects I've assigned them. The way it was phrased, that he was looking for an algorithm, and the answers you've all shared are just fine with me. However, this is a typical case of trying to make things too complicated. A part of the spec that was not mentioned was that the 80 characters limit was not a hard limit. I said that each line of the output file had to be roughly 80 characters long. It was OK to go over 80 a little. In my version of the solution, I just had a running count and did a modulus of the count to add the line end. I varied the value of the modulus until the output file looked right. This resulted in lines with small numbers being really short so I used a different modulus when the numbers were small. This wasn't a big part of the project and it's interesting that this got so much attention.

Answer 2

Our solution was to create a temporary string and append elements one by one, followed by a comma. Before adding an element, check if adding it will make the string longer than 80 characters and choose whether to print it and reset or just append.

This still has the issue with the extra trailing comma, but that's been dealt with so many times we'll be fine. I was looking to avoid this because it was originally more complicated in my head than it really is.

Answer 3

I think that better solution is to create your own WrapTextWriter that wraps any other writer and overrides method public void write(String str, int off, int len) throws IOException. Here it should run in loop and perform logic of wrapping.

This logic is not as simple as str.substring(80). If you are dealing with real text and wish to wrap it correctly (i.e. do not cut words, do not move comas or dots to the next line etc) you have to implement some logic. it is probably not too complicated but probably language dependent. For example in English there is not space between word and colon while in French they put space between them.

So, I performed 5 second googling and found the following discussion that can help you.

Answer 4

private static final int MAX_CHARACTERS = 80;

public static void main(String[] args) 
    throws FileNotFoundException 
{
    List<String> strings = new ArrayList<String>();

    int size = 0;

    PrintWriter writer = new PrintWriter(System.out, true); // Just as example

    for (String str : strings)
    {
        size += str.length();

        if (size > MAX_CHARACTERS)
        {
            writer.print(System.getProperty("line.separator") + str);
            size = 0;
        }
        else
            writer.print(str);
    }

}

You can simply write a function, like "void printWordWrap(List<String> strings)", with that algorithm inside. I think, it`s a good way to solve your problem. :)