pp not working on ruby file

Question

How do I get pp to wrap (limit) the line lengths to 79 characters as the pp documentation says?

The following example demonstrates that pp does not limit the output to default length 79 as stated in the pp documentation.

• (1) Put the following code into a file (pprfile.rb).

#!/usr/bin/env ruby
require 'pp'
STDIN.read.split("\n").each do |l|
  PP.pp(l)
end

• (2) Clone the Github typo code repo and cd into the repo directory.
• (3) Run the following command line:
  • pprfile.rb < ./app/controllers/accounts_controller.rb | awk 'length($0) > 79 { print length($0), $0 }'
• (4) I expected all of the output lines to be limited to less than or equal 79 characters, but here is what I I got as output:

  89 "      redirect_back_or_default :controller => \"admin/dashboard\", :action => \"index\""
  94 "      self.current_user = User.authenticate(params[:user][:login], params[:user][:password])"
  82 "          self.current_user.remember_me unless self.current_user.remember_token?"
  82 "        add_to_cookies(:typo_user_profile, self.current_user.profile_label, '/')"
  91 "        redirect_back_or_default :controller => \"admin/dashboard\", :action => \"index\""
  80 "    @page_title = \"#{this_blog.blog_name} - #{_('Recover your password')}\""
  124 "      @user = User.find(:first, :conditions => [\"login = ? or email = ?\", params[:user][:login], params[:user][:login]])"
  108 "        flash[:notice] = _(\"An email has been successfully sent to your address with your new password\")"
  88 "    redirect_to(:controller => \"accounts\", :action => \"signup\") if User.count == 0"
  92 "    redirect_to :controller => \"setup\", :action => \"index\" if  ! this_blog.configured?"</li>
  

Answer 1

I would guess because "pp" breaks only between atomic data elements, not within them. An atomic element would be a non-composite type (e.g. a string, symbol, number, etc).

That is, if you have an array whose serialized elements would exceed 79 columns then "pp" will serialize the array with linebreaks between elements. However, if one of those elements was a string of 100 chars then that element will be serialized as-is, presumably because "pp" doesn't want to decide where to break that "atomic" element.

Consider:

pp(Array.new(100, 'foo')) # => <breaks between each element>
pp('x' * 100) # => <displays on one line since it doesn't know where to break>