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...'

Answer 2

For Python 3.4+, I'd use textwrap.shorten.

For older versions:

def truncate(description, max_len=140, suffix='…'):    
    description = description.strip()
    if len(description) <= max_len:
        return description
    new_description = ''
    for word in description.split(' '):
      tmp_description = new_description + word
      if len(tmp_description) <= max_len-len(suffix):
          new_description = tmp_description + ' '
      else:
          new_description = new_description.strip() + suffix
          break
    return new_description