Allow line break, but without inserting a dash

Question

I have a sentence that contains a number of long dataset names. I would like to allow LaTeX to break these names at certain positions that I would like to specify somehow just like I can use \- to allow a word break with hyphenation. But: I would like LaTeX not to insert a dash (which could be mistaken as belonging to the dataset name). How can I do this?

(Something similar is realized in the url package so I guess I could just read that code :) I would not like to use the url package here to be able to make a syntactical (and typographic) difference between urls and datset names.)

Answer 1

You could insert \allowbreak whereever a break without hyphen shall be allowed, such as

long\allowbreak word

Answer 2

In addition to Stefan’s answer:

You can also write long""word, but this is a babel-shortcut (as most of the following). As Herbert pointed out these shortcuts are language specific. The list is taken form a german home page and are in the german section of babels manual.

- hyphen sign, no others in this word (hy-phenation > hy-|phenation)
"= hypen sign that allows other breaks (h"=yphenation > h-|y|phen|a|tion)
"~ hyphen sign without line break (hy"~phenation > hy-phenation)
\- possible hyphenation with sign (h\-yphenation > h|y|phen|a|tion)
"" possible hyphenation without sign ((super"~)""hyphenation > (super-)*hy|pen|a|tion)
"| break ligature and allow hyphenation

[( code > output); the pipe indicates possible line break with hyphen sign; asterisk indicates possible line break without sign.]

Source: This german homepage.

Answer 3

it is also possible to allow hyphenation on Characters

\documentclass{article}                 
\usepackage[hyphens]{url} 
\textwidth=10cm% only for demo
\DeclareUrlCommand\Code{\urlstyle{rm}}
\expandafter\def\expandafter\UrlBreaks\expandafter{\UrlBreaks  
\do\/\do\a\do\b\do\c\do\d\do\e\do\f\do\g\do\h\do\i\do\j\do\k
\do\l\do\m\do\n\do\o\do\p\do\q\do\r\do\s\do\t\do\u\do\v
\do\w\do\x\do\y\do\z
\do\A\do\B\do\C\do\D\do\E\do\F\do\G\do\H\do\I\do\J\do\K
\do\L\do\M\do\N\do\O\do\P\do\Q\do\R\do\S\do\T\do\U\do\V
\do\W\do\X\do\Y\do\Z}
\begin{document}            
\noindent\rule{\textwidth}{1pt}
some very long text before the hyphenated code
\Code{someverylongtextbeforethehyphenatedcode}

some very long text before the hyphenated code
\Code{some-long-command-name-with-a-lot-of-dases}
\end{document}    

Answer 4

I've had good results with

\linebreak[X]

Where X can be anything from 0 to 4. Zero means "if you really want, you can break the line here", while four means "break the line here, always".

To allow for long word breaking, you can insert it like this:

verylongword\linebreak[0]{}thatshouldbebroken

I'm not sure if it does not require specific packages though.

Answer 5

From The TeXbook:

\discretionary{<pre-break text>}{<post-break text>}{<no-break text>}

You could try something like:

\newcommand{\sep}{\discretionary{}{}{}}
\newcommand{\datasetname}{My\sep long\sep data\sep set\sep name}

Answer 6

@fuenfundachzig: Since you're familiar with the url package, you may want to try the following: Include the instructions \usepackage{url} and \urlstyle={same} in the preamble (instructing the url package to use the main text font for URLs), and then enclose the words that you'd like to be allow broken up inside \url{...} commands. In my experience, this works very well most of the time, but it's not 100% foolproof (narrensicher?), naturally.

Answer 7

A possibly “gentle” solution is to input your long words with spaces where the line breaks are allowed. The separator is customizable, here I added an optional argument for changing it at will.

I also disabled hyphenation by setting a language with no patterns; this is not necessary if a monospaced font is uses, as usually monospaced fonts disable hyphenation.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{xparse}
\ExplSyntaxOn
\NewDocumentCommand{\Code}{ O{~} m }
 {
  \group_begin:
  \tl_set:Nn \l_tmpa_tl { #2 }
  \tl_replace_all:Nnn \l_tmpa_tl { #1 } { \allowbreak }
  \language\csname l@nohyphenation\endcsname % or \language255
  \tl_use:N \l_tmpa_tl
  \group_end:
 }
\ExplSyntaxOff

\begin{document}
\parbox{10cm}{
some very long text before the hyphenated code
\Code{some very long text before thehyphenated code}

some very long text before the hyphenated code
\Code[-]{some-long-command-name-with-a-lot-of-dashes}
}

\bigskip

\parbox{3cm}{
\Code{some very long text before thehyphenated code}
}
\end{document}

Answer 8

Use pakage seqsplit, in main text: \seqsplit{qervnjksnvdjsn}, this means it can linebreak between every singal character, without dash or hyphen sign. Sorry for bad English. ：）