div with unspecified width (absolute positioning)

Question

I\'ve got an absolutely positioned div I\'m working with, and I put some text inside of it just to be able to find it on the page, namely:

Answer 1

I solved this by adding a wrapper div that is also absolutely positioned, with the width I want my div to expand up to.

E.g.,

And css,

.wrapper {
    position: absolute;
    width: 500px;
}

.my-div {
    position: absolute;
    whitespace: pre-wrap;
}

You can add whitespace: pre-wrap to allow wrapping lines, which makes this more flexible than the nowrap solution.