Break word at specific character

Question

I realise that similar questions have been asked, but none quite like this.

I have a situation where I am using BEM to display some classes in code tags. Below is an example:

Obviously the default behaviour is to break words at a hyphen, as we can see is happening in the example. Is there a way that I can control what characters the line-break occurs at? I would like to be able to have class name integrity maintained so that the line break occurs before each period . if necessary.

Depending on what flexibility you have with your html structure and / or modifying the strings, you may find something useful here: [How to prevent line breaks at hyphens...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/8753296/how-to-prevent-line-break-at-hyphens-on-all-browsers) — benvc, Sep 20 '18 at 04:54

jla · Answer 1 · 2018-09-20T06:46:20.930

Unfortunately I don't think there is a way to do everything you want with pure CSS.

UPDATE: removed spaces before periods in JS solution.

If you are able to use JavaScript you could process the code tag's contents to disable wrapping for words with hyphens and you could wrap each block starting with a period in an inline-block span.

The following code breaks the contents of each code tag into a list of blocks that start with either space or period. Each block is wrapped with a span that prevents wrapping, and blocks that begin with a period are additionally marked as display: inline-block;. This should give the behaviour you are looking for, and additionally preserve all content when copy-pasting text.

CSS:

.no-wrap-hyphen {
    white-space: nowrap;
}
.wrap-period {
    display: inline-block;
}

JavaScript (run this function on window load and resize):

function wrapPeriodsNotHyphens() { // run on window load or resize
    var codes = document.getElementsByTagName( "code" );

    for ( var i = 0; i < codes.length; i++ ) {

        currentCode = codes[ i ].innerHTML.split(/(?=[ .])/); // split by spaces and periods

        for ( var c = 0; c < currentCode.length; c++ ) {
            // surround each item with nowrap span
            currentCode[ c ] = '<span class="no-wrap-hyphen">' + currentCode[ c ] + '</span>';
            if ( currentCode[ c ].indexOf( '.' ) > -1 ) {
                // add a zero size space at the start for periods
                currentCode[ c ] = '<span class="wrap-period">' + currentCode[ c ] + '</span>';
            }
        }

        codes[ i ].innerHTML = currentCode.join('');
    }
}

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Sep 20 '18 at 06:01

I have another solution using jquery,

$('.mypara').each(function () {
     var str = $(this).html();  
      var htmlfoo = str.split('.').join('</br>');
     $(this).html(htmlfoo);
 });

<script src="https://code.jquery.com/jquery-3.3.1.min.js"></script>
<code class="mypara">
This is-the HTML if its - characters exceed 50. characters it should go-to next line
</code>

<code class="mypara">
This is the HTM-if its. characters exceed 50 - characters it should. go-to next-line
</code>

Break word at specific character

2 Answers2