Verbatim environment that can break too long lines?

Question

I want to generate a PDF of user-submitted text using LaTeX. To handle crazy user input, I first thought about using the verbatim package, but of course it doesn't break up too long lines. Is there some package that works similar to verbatim (i.e., accept any input) but formats the text nicely?

Answer 1

The listings package provides you with a verbatim environment which can break lines:

\begin{lstlisting}[breaklines]
  Long user text
\end{lstlisting}

If the user text is in an external file you can also use:

\lstinputlisting[breaklines]{filename}

Answer 2

\usepackage{spverbatim}
...

\begin{spverbatim}
This is a very long line.1

\end{spverbatim}

The spverbatim package enables LaTEX to break lines at spaces within verbatim text.

Answer 3

Depending on what you exactly need, this might be sufficient: we reset all special characters to catcode other, in particular \, { and } lose their meaning. This will make it pretty hard to inject LaTeX code.

\documentclass[12pt]{article}

\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}

\makeatletter
\newcommand\saferead[1]{%
  \bgroup
  \let\do\@makeother
  \dospecials\catcode`\ 10
  \input{#1}%
  \egroup 
}
\makeatother

\begin{document}
And to show it, we input ourselves: \saferead{test.tex}
\end{document}

Answer 4

You can use \def\@xobeysp{ } in the preamble of your document to make all spaces regular (breaking) spaces. This will not hyphenate or break ultra-long words, though.

To format the text nicely, you can use the Verbatim environment, in the fancyvrb package:

\begin{Verbatim}[formatcom=\sffamily]
  Hello world hello world hello world
  Test
\end{Verbatim}

^{_{Will print the text in a Sans-seriF font family.}}

Though (I'm sorry!) the \def\@xobeysp{ } won't work with the Verbatim environment... So you must choose between the two.