On Fri, Apr 5, 2019 at 6:16 AM MRAB <pyt...@mrabarnett.plus.com> wrote: > > On 2019-04-04 19:53, David Raymond wrote: > > The function is constructing a list of the lines, which it will combine at > > the end. Answering the questions in reverse order: > > > > 3. Also why that `if` test is required there. > > The if statement is saying "I don't have room on my current line for the > > next word, so time to start a new line" > > > > 2. In the if clause why `current_line_length` is set back to 0 every time > > the condition is true. > > current_line_length is, well, the length of the current line. Where it's > > set to 0 is when you've just started a new line, so it's saying "I'm now on > > a new line and have used up 0 characters so far on that line" > > > > 1. why `line_length` is set to `current_line_length` initially? > > lines_of_words starts out empty. Setting current_line_length to line_length > > triggers the "hey, I need to make a new line" on the first word, > > effectively creating the first line. > > > > > > > > Also, I feel like there's a bug in this, where > > > > current_line_length += len(word) > > > > should be... > > > > current_line_length += (len(word) + 1) > > > > Otherwise the line length doesn't count the spaces. And a lot of little > > words will result in longer lines than you asked for. > > > Yep, spotted that too! :-) BTW, your fix also a bug: the last word on a > line won't be followed by a space (off-by-one). The easiest fix for that > is to add 1 to line_length initially, another little trick.
Or, equivalently, to reset current_line_length to -1, which is an elegant hack. ChrisA -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
