tinanemati / word_wrap

A program that word wrap and pad a text file based on a given right margin

Word Wrap Program

Implemented a program which will word wrap and pad a text file based on a given right margin. The program should run on all the system that have Java JDK and Java JRE; for this particular program I used Java SE version 10, and the IDE I used was eclipse IDE for java developers(version 4.11.0) on windows 10.

Example of an input and the expected output

Given the following text and a right margin of 20:

JK Rowling, the creator of the Harry Potter adventures, is donating £1m to charities supporting vulnerable people during the lockdown.[\n]
[\n]
Half of the money will go to Crisis which helps homeless people, and half to Refuge to support victims of domestic abuse.

The following output will be created:

JK   Rowling,   the[\n]
creator    of   the[\n]
Harry        Potter[\n]
adventures,      is[\n]
donating   £1m   to[\n]
charities[\n]
supporting[\n]
vulnerable   people[\n]
during          the[\n]
lockdown.[\n]
[\n]
Half  of  the money[\n]
will  go  to Crisis[\n]
which         helps[\n]
homeless    people,[\n]
and  half to Refuge[\n]
to  support victims[\n]
of  domestic abuse.

• Where [\n] has been used to represent the newline character.

The program takes in 3 parameters:

1. An input file containing the text unformatted
   • This file is a simple text file
   • This parameter will be specified via the command line flag -input
2. A number containing the right margin to be used for word wrapping
   • This parameters will be specified via command line flag -margin
3. An output file to produce the output: a word-wrapped, padded, text
   • This parameter will be specified via command line flag -output

As an Example:

Assuming your main class is called Main

java -cp ... Main -input unformated_text.txt -margin 20 -output output_file.txt

• Part of the program requires to validate these parameters also (making sure the file exists, can be read etc, the margin number is valid etc).

Rules implemented for word wrapping:

1. If the line contains only one word, or one word followed by punctuation (comma, fullstop, semi-colon etc) no padding needed.
2. If at least 2 words on the line, pad the text with spaces such that the first word starts at column 1 and the last character of the line is exactly on the right margin (20 in the above).
3. Empty lines (just [\n]) remain unchanged.
4. If a single word is encountered which is longer than the margin, it will appear by itself on a single line.
5. Last line of a paragraph doesn't have to be padded.
   • A paragraph is defined as the text in between 2 new lines or a new line and end of text.

Note that this is NOT the optimal solution, but rather a solution which word wraps and pads the text in line with the guidelines above.