Hardwrap: wrap lines to specified length

[J65nko]

A perl script that wraps lines to a specified length, even if it is in the middle of a word. Just like the Red Queen it just chops it off.
See fmt(1) for a more gentle wrap that respects words by splitting only on white space.

Some examples of how to use hardwrap are described in the script:

$ echo 123456789 | ./hardwrap 4
1234
5678
9
$ openssl rand -base64 48 | ./hardwrap 15  
2IHvJwLw/F3s07y
QMMHz7rYPo9Ems/
avUD0y4eAd/WMQt
fVzND0UzafsKYAs
+qXm

$ dmesg | ./hardwrap 70 | less 
[snip]
cpu0 at mainbus0: apid 0 (boot processor)
cpu0: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E3-1220 v3 @ 3.10GHz, 3093.23 MHz, 06-3c-03

cpu0: FPU,VME,DE,PSE,TSC,MSR,PAE,MCE,CX8,APIC,SEP,MTRR,PGE,MCA,CMOV,PA
T,PSE36,CFLUSH,DS,ACPI,MMX,FXSR,SSE,SSE2,SS,HTT,TM,PBE,SSE3,PCLMUL,DTE
S64,MWAIT,DS-CPL,VMX,SMX,EST,TM2,SSSE3,SDBG,FMA3,CX16,xTPR,PDCM,PCID,S
SE4.1,SSE4.2,x2APIC,MOVBE,POPCNT,DEADLINE,AES,XSAVE,AVX,F16C,RDRAND,NX
E,PAGE1GB,RDTSCP,LONG,LAHF,ABM,PERF,ITSC,FSGSBASE,TSC_ADJUST,BMI1,AVX2
,SMEP,BMI2,ERMS,INVPCID,SRBDS_CTRL,MD_CLEAR,IBRS,IBPB,STIBP,L1DF,SSBD,
SENSOR,ARAT,XSAVEOPT,MELTDOWN
cpu0: 256KB 64b/line 8-way L2 

$ ./hardwrap 10 < random.txt
fLS89I27R9
x2fuEkr3oy
MMc0

The script itself is very short:

#!/usr/bin/perl
# (c) 2022 J65nko - daemonforums.org
# Free to use and distribute under ISC license

use warnings;
use strict;

# read line width parameter
my $LineWidth = $ARGV[0];

# shift ARGV[1] into ARGV[0] (could be the optional file name)
shift;

# read from file or standard input

while (<>) {
    s/(.{$LineWidth})/$1\n/g;
    print; 
}
# --- end of script

A global search and substitute regular expression, collects the number of characters in the variable $1, appends a newline character and prints it.

Because of the "/g" global specifier, it tries to repeat the procedure. If it fails to collect the needed number of characters, it will just give up. The remainder of the characters in the line will just be printed.

A short explanation of the regex magic as described in the script:

# s             search and substitute 
# /             delimiter for start of search pattern
# (             start capture in variable $1
# .             any character
# {             start quantifier specification
# $lineWidth    number/integer passed as parameter
# }             end quantifier specification
# )             stop capture in variable $1
# /             end delimiter search, begin delimiter for substitution 
# $1            the captured characters
# \n            add a newline 
# /             end delimiter for replace
# g             g(lobal) : repeat for whole line