Truncate a string without ending in the middle of a word

Question

I am looking for a way to truncate a string in Python that will not cut off the string in the middle of a word.

For example:

Original:          \"This is          


        

Answer 1

def smart_truncate(s, width):
    if s[width].isspace():
        return s[0:width];
    else:
        return s[0:width].rsplit(None, 1)[0]

Testing it:

>>> smart_truncate('The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.', 23) + "..."
'The quick brown fox...'