Thonny: Text Wrapping Made Easy

Thonny is a Python IDE (Integrated Development Environment)for beginners . One of its most useful features for beginners is its ability to automatically wrap text, which makes the code more readable and easy to understand. In this article, we will take a closer look at how the wrap text feature works in Thonny and how you can use it to improve your coding experience.

Thonny’s logo looks as in the image given below:

How Thonny helps beginners?

When you are learning to code, readability is an important factor to consider. One of the challenges of writing code is that the text can become very long and difficult to read, especially if you are working on a large project. This can make it hard to understand what the code is doing and can make it difficult to spot errors. Thonny’s wrap text feature addresses this issue by automatically wrapping text to fit within the width of the window.

For example, let’s say you have the following piece of code:

for i in range(0,10):
    print("This is a very long line of text that will be difficult to read and understand because it is too long and goes beyond the edge of the window.")

As you can see, the text is very long and will be difficult to read. Thonny’s wrap text feature wraps the text automatically to fit within the width of the window, making it much easier to read and understand.

You can adjust the width of the window and the number of characters per line to suit your needs and preferences. Additionally, you can configure it to wrap text when you are typing or after the file is saved. This allows you to keep your code looking precisely the way you want it to, which is particularly useful if you’re working on a large project with a lot of code.

Advantages of Thonny wrap text feature

One of the main advantages of Thonny’s wrap text feature is that it helps to make the code more readable and easy to understand, especially for beginners. When you’re just starting to learn to code, it can be difficult to understand what the code is doing, especially if it’s very long and difficult to read. By automatically wrapping text, Thonny makes it easier to understand the code and helps to minimize the chance of errors.

Another advantage of Thonny’s wrap text feature is that it makes it easier to work on large projects. When working on a large project, it can be difficult to keep track of all the different lines of code, especially if they’re very long and difficult to read. Thonny’s wrap text feature helps to keep the lines of code organized and makes it easier to find and fix errors.

In addition to the wrap text feature, Thonny also offers other useful features for beginners such as built-in debugging tools, variable visualization, and an easy-to-use interface. These features, combined with the wrap text feature, make Thonny a great choice for anyone who is just starting to learn programming.

Enabling wrap text feature in Thonny

To enable the wrap text feature in Thonny, go to the “Edit” menu and select “Preferences”. In the preferences menu, go to the “Editor” tab and check the “Wrap lines” option. You can also adjust the width of the window and the number of characters per line to suit your needs.

Variable visualisation feature

of variables while debugging their code. With this feature, users can view the values of variables at different stages of their program’s execution, which can be useful for understanding how their code is behaving and for identifying and fixing errors.

In Thonny, the variable visualization feature is accessible from the Variables pane. This pane displays the values of all the variables in the current scope of the program. We can view and inspect those variables in different ways, such as by name, value, and type. We can modify the values of the variables directly from the variables pane, which can be useful for quickly testing code changes.

Visualising variable's value as we move ahead in Thonny.
Visualising the variable
Visualising function calls using Thonny
Visualising various function calls(useful especially in recursions)

Python wrap text function

In Python, the textwrap module provides several functions for wrapping and formatting text. The wrap() function or fill() the function can wrap a single paragraph of text without breaking the words.

Python wrap text to the new line

Here is an example of how to use the wrap() function:

import textwrap
text = "This is a very long piece of text that needs to be wrapped. It can contain multiple sentences and even paragraphs."
# Set the width of the wrapped text
width = 40
# Use the wrap() function to wrap the text
wrapped_text = textwrap.wrap(text, width=width)
# Print the wrapped text
for line in wrapped_text:
    print(line)

This will output the following wrapped text:

wrap() function's output
wrap() function’s output

The wrap() function takes two arguments: the text to be wrapped and the width of the wrapped text. The width is the number of characters in each wrapped text line. The function returns a list of strings, where each string is a line of the wrapped text.

Python wrap text in quotes

We can achieve this by firstly wrapping the text using fill() or wrap() and then concatenating the wrapped text with quotes using string concatenation or string formatting.

Here is an example of how to use the fill() function to wrap text in quotes:

import textwrap

text = "This is a very long piece of text that needs to be wrapped. It can contain multiple sentences and even paragraphs."

# Set the width of the wrapped text
width = 40

# Use the fill() function to wrap the text
wrapped_text = textwrap.fill(text, width=width)

# Wrap the text in quotes
wrapped_text_in_quotes = '\"' + wrapped_text + '\"'

# Print the wrapped text in quotes
print(wrapped_text_in_quotes)
Wrap text in quotes
Wrap text in quotes

FAQs

What is the purpose of built-in debugger in Thonny?

It allows users to step through their code line-by-line, set breakpoints, and inspect the values of variables as the code runs.

Can we filter values from the Variables Pane in Thonny?

Yes, we can filter variables by name, value or type, which is useful for easily locating specific variables and their values

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