R/add_line_breaks.R

In rmetaverse/synthesisr: Import, Assemble, and Deduplicate Bibliographic Datasets

#' Add line breaks to one or more strings
#' @description This function takes a vector of strings and adds line breaks every n characters. Primarily built to be called internally by format_citation, this function has been made available as it can be useful in other contexts.
#' @param x Either a string or a vector; if the vector is not of class character if will be coerced to one using as.character.
#' @param n Numeric: The desired number of characters that should separate consecutive line breaks.
#' @param max_n Numeric: The maximum number of characters that may separate consecutive line breaks.
#' @param html logical: Should the line breaks be specified in html?
#' @param max_time Numeric: What is the maximum amount of time (in seconds) allowed to adjust groups until character thresholds are reached?
#' @details Line breaks are only added between words, so the value of n is actually a threshold value rather than being matched exactly. max_n is matched exactly if a limit is set and max_time is not reached finding new break points between words.
#' @return Returns the input vector unaltered except for the addition of line breaks.
#' @examples add_line_breaks(c("On the Origin of Species"), n = 10)
add_line_breaks <- function(x, n = 50, max_n=80, html = FALSE, max_time=60){
  if(html){break_string <- "<br>"}else{break_string <- "\n"}
  split_text <- strsplit(as.character(x), " ")
  out_list <- lapply(split_text, function(a){
    if(length(a) == 0){
      return("")
    }else{
      result <- data.frame(
        text = a,
        nchars = nchar(a, allowNA = TRUE, keepNA = TRUE),
        stringsAsFactors = FALSE
      )
      if(any(is.na(result$nchars))){
        result$nchars[which(is.na(result$nchars))] <- 2
      }
      result$sum <- cumsum(result$nchars)

      result$group <- cut(result$sum,
        breaks = seq(0, max(result$sum)+n-1, n),
        labels = FALSE)

      result_list <- split(result$text, result$group)

      start_time <- Sys.time()
      elapsed <- 0


      while(any(lapply(result_list, function(x){
        sum(nchar(x))
      })>max_n) & elapsed < max_time){
        error_start <- min(which(lapply(result_list, function(x){
          sum(nchar(x))
        })>max_n))
        error_range <- min(which(result$group==error_start)):nrow(result)

        result$sum[error_range] <- cumsum(result$nchars[error_range])

        result$group[error_range] <- cut(result$sum[error_range],
                            breaks = seq(0, max(result$sum[error_range])+n-1, n),
                            labels = FALSE)+result$group[error_range[1]-1]

        result_list <- split(result$text, result$group)
        current_time <- Sys.time()
        elapsed <- as.numeric(difftime(current_time, start_time, units = "secs"))
        if(elapsed>max_time){
          stop(print("Maximum time limit for parsing lines reached"))
        }
      }

      result <- paste(
        unlist(
          lapply(result_list, function(a){paste(a, collapse = " ")})
        ),
        collapse = break_string)
      return(result)
    }
  })
  return(unlist(out_list))
}