Python 3.4+textwrapfunction

textwrap.shorten

wrapping

Collapse and truncate text to fit `width`, replacing the tail with a placeholder.

Syntax

textwrap.shorten(text, width, placeholder=' [...]')

It normalizes whitespace first — every run of spaces and newlines collapses to a single space — so it is not the tool for "keep the first N characters"; a plain slice is. Truncation happens at word boundaries and the placeholder counts toward width: if not even the first word fits you get the placeholder alone, and a placeholder longer than width raises ValueError.

Examples

import textwrap
print(textwrap.shorten('Hello world foo', 12, placeholder='...'))   # → Hello...
print(textwrap.shorten('Python is a great language', 20))   # → Python is a [...]
print(textwrap.shorten('  a   b  ', 10))   # → a b
print(textwrap.shorten('Hello world!', 10))   # → [...]
print('Hello world foo'[:8])   # → Hello wo

See also

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