[R] Title splitting function

[Ista Zahn]

Hi Michael,
It looks like you're having fun, I hope I don't spoil it for you:

title <- "some variety of words that are descriptive"
paste(strwrap(title, width=16), collapse="\n")

-Ista

On Fri, Jan 22, 2010 at 9:07 PM, Michael Pearmain <mpearmain at google.com> wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> I'm trying to write a function to automatically split long strings so they
> will appear nicely in a chart i'm trying to create,
>
> Say i have a string
>
> title <- "some variety of words that are descriptive"
>
> In this instance i want to place carriage return where there is a space just
> prior to a specified number of characters (in this case 15)
>
> title.length <- nchar(title)
> no.splits <- floor(title.length / 15)
> space.title <- c(gregexpr("[[:space:]]", title)[[1]])
>
> space.title # This tells me the position of all spaces in the title
> [1]  5 13 16 22 27 31
>> no.splits # This tells me how many carriage returns i will need
> [1] 2
>> title.length # this tells me teh total length of the title string
> [1] 42
>
> I can then check to see where the last value is for each string i.e. where i
> should make the break with (no.splits * characters (i.e 15)
>  15 < space.title ##(15 * 1 split)
> [1] FALSE FALSE  TRUE  TRUE  TRUE  TRUE
>> 30 < space.title  ## (15 *2 splits)
> [1] FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE  TRUE
>>
>
> (I'm guessing i need to create some loop or apply here)
>
> So i know i need to do a sub at positions 13 and 27 of "" to "\n"
>
> So my final output would appear as
> title <- "some variety\nof words that are\ndescriptive"
>
> But i'm getting stuck as to find a way to work out the the positions 13, 27
> dynamically and returning them to use later
> Can anyone offer any advise?
>
> Thanks All.
>
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>
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-- 
Ista Zahn
Graduate student
University of Rochester
Department of Clinical and Social Psychology
http://yourpsyche.org