wordbreak helper method

wordbreak_helper.rb

  # Helper method to add html soft hyphen entities to words whose character length exceeds a given integer.
  # Note: This is an overkill substitute for the poorly supported CSS word-break property.

  def wordbreak(string, max_length = 12)
    max_length = max_length < 5 ? 4 : max_length # force min max_length of 4
    
    words = string.scan(/(?:"[\w'\.\-]*"\.?)|(?:'[\w'\.\-]*'\.?)|(?:[\w'\.]+)/)
    words.each do |word|
      if word.length > max_length
        index = word.include?("-") ? word.index('-')+1 : max_length-2
        existing_word = word.strip      
        new_word = word.insert(index, "&shy;")
        string.gsub!(existing_word, new_word)
      end
    end
    string
  end


  # rspec test
  it "should add html soft hyphen entities to words whose character length exceeds a given integer" do
    text = "This is a string with some superduperextralong words including some-hyphened-words. Hyphens should 'act-like-spaces'. No need for additional word breaks. But watch for quoted-hyphenated words -- \"double-quoted-hyphens\" - they should be treated as one word."
    wordbreak(text).should == "This is a string with some superduper&shy;extralong words including some-hyphened-words. Hyphens should 'act-&shy;like-spaces'. No need for additional word breaks. But watch for quoted-hyphenated words -- \"double-&shy;quoted-hyphens\" - they should be treated as one word."
  end

Helper method to add html soft hyphen entities to words whose character length exceeds a given integer.
Note: This is an overkill substitute for the poorly supported CSS word-break property.