split string multiple characters without space C#

Question

I have a field that is displayed inside a div and the problem is that it doesn't break line if a user puts in a string thats longer then the number of characters that can fit outside the line within a div, it basically stretches outside the div. How can I insert a space in every word 'thats in a string' that has a seuqence of 20 characters or more without a space between . For example, now I am doing something like this

string words
Regex.Replace(words, "(.{" + 20 + "})", "$1" + Environment.NewLine);

But that just inserts a line break at every 20 character oppose to a sequence without a space. I am really not that good with regular expressions so the code above is something I found.

Answer 1

Would a CSS solution work better?

word-wrap:break-word;

example: http://jsfiddle.net/45Fq4/

Answer 2

To solve this with regex you could use @"(\\S{20})" as your pattern.

\\S will match any non-whitespace character which I believe fits your criteria since it will then only work if it finds 20 or more non-whitespace characters in a row.

Example usage is:

string words = "It should break after \"t\": abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz";
string output = Regex.Replace(words, @"(\S{20})", "$1" + Environment.NewLine);

Answer 3

this code worked for me:

string words
string outputwords = words;
int CharsWithoutSpace = 0;
for (int i = 0; i < outputwords.Length; i++)
{
     if (outputwords[i] == ' ')
     {
         CharsWithoutSpace = 0;
     }
     else
     {
         CharsWithoutSpace++;
         if (CharsWithoutSpace >= 20)
         {
             outputwords = outputwords.Insert(i + 1, Environment.NewLine);
             CharsWithoutSpace = 0;
         }
    }
}
Console.WriteLine(outputwords);