Controlling Word Wrap in a container - regex

Question

I have a peculiar problem. I have an email group that pipes emails to a message board. The word wrap of the emails varies. In yahoo, the messages tend to fill the entire container on the message board. But in all other mail clients, only part of the container width is filled, because the original mail was wrapped. I want all of the email messages to fill the entire width of the container. I've thought of two possible solutions: CSS, or a Regex that eliminates line breaks. Because I am only a garage mechanic (at these sorts of things), I simply cannot get the job done. Any help out there?
Here is a link that shows the issue: http://seanwilson.org/forum/index.php?t=msg&th=1729&start=0&S=171399e41f2c10c4357dd9b217caaa3f
(compare the message of "sean" with that of "rob." One fills the container, the other not).
Can any of you suggest how to get all the mail to fill the container?

Answer 1

You gave too little information - what programming language are you using - PHP/Javascript/anything different?
I think you only need to replace \n, \r and \r\n with whitespace. PHP code for that:
$nowrap = str_replace('\r\n', ' ', $nowrap);
$nowrap = str_replace('\r', ' ', $nowrap);
$nowrap = str_replace('\n', ' ', $nowrap);
You can do that analogically in other languages (for JS see string.replace method: http://www.tizag.com/javascriptT/javascript-string-replace.php).

Answer 2

Depending on the situation (people always seem to add 2 linebreaks between paragraphs), you could say the problem is: replace all newlines not directly preceded or followed by a newline with a space.
//just to be sure, remove \r's
$string = str_replace("\r",'',$string);
$string = preg_replace('/(?<!\n)\n(?!\n)/',' ',$string);
While allowing \r's:
$string = preg_replace('/(?<!\r|\n)\r?\n(?!\r|\n)/',' ',$string);
Edit: nevermind: do not use: while people tend to write their email text in paragraphs, you will break their signature / signoff with this regex. One could fiddle around with a minimum linelength before deeming it 'breakable' (i chose 63), but fiddly it will be:
$string = preg_replace('/([^\r\n]{63,})\r?\n(?!\r|\n)/','$1 ',$string);
The problem is: there are no assurance the linebreak wasn't intended. With a fiddleable line-length you could base it on average users, but the question is: what do they mind more: the differences between breaking & non-breaking paragraphs, or the breaking of their signatures?

Answer 3

Thanks for getting back so quickly!
The discussion board uses php (and also CSS). The only trouble is that I am somewhat limited in my ability to tinker with its programing. If I am to do this at my current level of skilty, I have only one of two options.
using a preg-replace in php. The discussion board allows us to do this from a control panel. So If I could do it with one preg-replace statement, it should work.
Would Wrikken's solution work if I do not remove \r's? Because that seems to be spot on. (could the \r's be added to the preg-replace?)
I had hoped the solution could come through a css property of some sort. I guess that isn't possible.
Thanks so much for your help!
[NOTE: thanks so much for your help! The solution worked!!! I changed the number to 53 or so. It needed to be a little smaller. I don't care that a rare, long signature lines may lose its carriage return. That's a small price to pay for a full message box! You easily saved me several days of learning something that was bound to be moderately frustrating, Thanks so much for that quick fix. I am joyous at the help I received here.]