Programming Praxis

Today’s exercise would make a good interview question, though I don’t know of anyone doing that; you should answer as if you are standing at a whiteboard explaining your code as you go:

Given a string and a line width, split the string into words (a maximal run of characters excluding spaces) and write the words onto successive lines with spaces added between the words so that each line is the requested width. Words should be added to lines greedily (as many words as will fit) and extra spaces should be assigned to the left of the output string. The last line should not have spaces added, so it may be shorter than the other lines.

For example, the string “This is an example of text justification” is written with a line width of 16 like this:

    ----+----+----+-
    This    is    an
    example  of text
    justification.
    ----+----+----+-

Your task is to write a program that greedily justifies text. When you are finished, you are welcome to read or run a suggested solution, or to post your own solution or discuss the exercise in the comments below.

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