Text Justification — Print as Table

Given a list of articles (or sentences) and a fixed line width, format each article into a bordered table where every line is exactly `width` characters wide. Words must not split; punctuation cannot start a line; insert a `----` separator between consecutive articles. Requirements Input: articles: List[str], width: int. Each article is wrapped into lines so no line exceeds width characters and no word is split. A line must not begin with a punctuation character (. , ; : ! ? and similar — clarify the exact set). Avoid leaving a single word on a line when possible. Insert a separator line "----" between consecutive articles. For the table variant, wrap each line with | borders and pad to width with trailing spaces; horizontal rules are +---...---+. Example (table variant, width = 55): +-------------------------------------------------------+ | Hello world | +-------------------------------------------------------+ | How are you today | +-------------------------------------------------------+ | Bye | +-------------------------------------------------------+ Follow-up: extend to multi-column layout — given n_columns and a per-column width, balance the article across columns. Notes The greedy line-builder runs in O(total characters): walk word-by-word, append until adding the next word would exceed width, then flush. Punctuation-leading rule: if the next word starts with a punctuation char, force-attach it to the previous line even if it overflows by a small margin (clarify the exact policy — some prompts say "skip the line break", others say "always keep the punctuation with the prior word"). The "avoid a single word on a line" rule asks for a small look-ahead: if flushing now would leave a single word for the next line and that word fits with one extra space on the current line, attach it. Border rendering is mechanical but error-prone — pre-compute the horizontal-rule string once. The multi-column follow-up is a classic interval-balancing problem: total wrapped lines / n_columns, with overflow rules. Preparation Implement the wrap loop (no borders) in under 12 minutes; then layer the border rendering on top. Hand-trace a 30-character width example with a punctuation-leading edge to confirm the policy. Drill the multi-column follow-up: split the wrapped line list into n_columns near-equal chunks, then render side-by-side. Practice articulating the punctuation rule before coding — interviewers often refine it mid-question.