Auto line break with very long word within table

Question

I am trying to break a very very long number, 128 in length, to fit into a table cell so it won't go over the page.

I've looked up methods using longtabu, tabular with p{5cm} commend, \makecell, \parbox{}, \multicolumn with p{5cm}, but non of those works. It seems like they only line break at "space" but does not line break one whole word, in my case is number.

I know it is possible to manually break line with \\ or \newline, but this doesn't seem practical in the long-run as I need to manually change this as the format of my document may change depending on the requirements given to me.

The only way I have in mind now, is to screenshot the long numbers into a figure, and insert it into the table. But if there is a better solution, I would like to use it.

Code that I use to longtabu attempt

\begin{longtabu} to \textwidth {
    |X[1,c]
    |X[10,l]|}
    \hline
    \textbf{Head 1} & 
    \textbf{Head 2} 
    \\ \hline
    12:18:52  & this is a description for the event \\\hline
    12:18:52  & this is a description for the event \\\hline
    12:18:52  & this is a description for the event this is a description for the event this is a description for the event this is a description for the event this is a description for the event this is a description for the event this is a description for the event this is a description for the event this is a description for the event this is a description for the event this is a description for the event this is a description for the event this is a description for the event this is a description for the event this is a description for the event this is a description for the event this is a description for the event this is a description for the event \\\hline
    12:18:52  & 11111111111111111111111111111111111111222222222222222222222222222222222222222223333333333333333333333333333333333344444444444444444444455555555555555555555555555555555666666666666666666666666666777777777777777777777778888888888888888\\\hline
\end{longtabu}

Using p{}

\begin{tabular}{|p{1cm}|p{5cm}|}
  This text will be wrapped & Some more text \\\hline
  this & 11111111111111111111111111111111111111222222222222222222222222222222222222222223333333333333333333333333333333333344444444444444444444455555555555555555555555555555555666666666666666666666666666777777777777777777777778888888888888888\\\hline
\end{tabular}

Herbert solution at Break long word in tabular

Answer 1

You could load the xurl package and encase the long number in a \url{...} "wrapper".

(The following code uses a tabularx environment since I'm not familiar with longtabu.)

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{tabularx,xurl}
\urlstyle{same}
\begin{document} 
\noindent
\begin{tabularx}{\textwidth}{@{} lX @{}}
\hline
\textbf{Head 1} & \textbf{Head 2} \\ 
\hline
12:18:52  & this is a description for the event \\
\hline
12:18:52  &
\url{11111111111111111111111111111111111111222222222222222222222222222222222222222223333333333333333333333333333333333344444444444444444444455555555555555555555555555555555666666666666666666666666666777777777777777777777778888888888888888}\\
\hline
\end{tabularx}
\end{document}

Answer 2

Another solution with seqsplit, xltabular, which combines the functionalities of longtable and tabularx, and makecell to define some vertical padding of cells in the table:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{seqsplit, makecell, xltabular}

\begin{document}

{\setcellgapes[b]{3pt}
\setcellgapes[t]{2pt}\makegapedcells
\noindent\begin{xltabular}{\textwidth}{|c|X|}%|
    \hline
    \textbf{Head 1} &
    \textbf{Head 2}
    \\ \hline
    12:18:52 & this is a description for the event \\\hline
    12:18:52 & this is a description for the event \\\hline
    12:18:52 & this is a description for the event this is a description for the event this is a description for the event this is a description for the event this is a description for the event this is a description for the event this is a description for the event this is a description for the event this is a description for the event this is a description for the event this is a description for the event this is a description for the event this is a description for the event this is a description for the event this is a description for the event this is a description for the event this is a description for the event this is a description for the event \\\hline
    12:18:52 & \seqsplit{ 111111111111111111111111111111111111112222222222222222222222222222222222222222233333333333333333333333333333333333444444444444444444444%
    55555555555555555555555555555555666666666666666666666666666777777777777777777777778888888888888888} \\\hline
\end{xltabular}}

\end{document} 

Answer 3

The problem is that the number is not in the list of words that tex uses to determine possible break points of words, but one can manually add them by placing \- at each point where the number can be broken across lines:

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage[english]{babel}

\begin{document}

\begin{tabular}{|p{1cm}|p{5cm}|}
  This text will be wrapped & Some more text \\\hline
  this & 1\-111\-111\-1111\-111\-111\-11\-111\-111\-111\-111\-111\-111\-122\-22\-222\-22\-222\-22\-22\-222\-22\-22\\\hline
\end{tabular}

\end{document}