How can I split a line in 2 by words/characters?

Question

I would like to convert:

Hello Hello Hi Hello Hello Hi Hi Hi Hi Hello

Into:

Hello Hello Hi Hello
Hello Hi Hi Hi Hi Hello

I want to split a single line in 2, by having them have the closest amount of characters as possible, without cutting off a word.

I think I can probably do it with wc -w, wc -c, cut, and/or awk, but maybe you guys can provide some better ideas!

Answer 1

This can be a job for fold, a handy util to wrap lines:

$ s="Hello Hello Hi Hello Hello Hi Hi Hi Hi Hello"
$ fold -w $(( ${#s} / 2 + 1)) -s <<< "$s"
Hello Hello Hi Hello
Hello Hi Hi Hi Hi Hello

This uses fold to wrap each line to a given length. And how do we calculate the length? Just using ${#variable} and dividing by 2 (+1 to prevent getting three lines if the length is odd). We then use -s to prevent breaking words.

From man fold:

fold - wrap each input line to fit in specified width

   -s, --spaces
          break at spaces

   -w, --width=WIDTH
          use WIDTH columns instead of 80