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I want to output text like so: 

Якета            : **************************** 1250.23 €
Обувки за футбол : ********************** 912.30 €
Екипи            : ************** 513.45 €
Топки            : ************ 502.52 €
T-SHIRTS         : ********* 420.19 €

How can I use placeholders to indent all colons to the length of the longest string - in this case Обувки за футбол?

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    Get the len of the string, subtract it from the len of the longest string, and add that many spaces to the end of the string. Commented Feb 2, 2016 at 12:46

2 Answers 2

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Probably, the most elegant way is to use the format method. It allows to easily define the space a string will use:

>>> name = 'Якета'
>>> asterisks = '****************************'
>>> price = 1250.23
>>> print '{0:17}: {1} {2} €'.format(name, asterisks, price)
Якета       : **************************** 1250.23 €

Should you need to programmatically define padding size (for instance, to dynamically accept larger strings instead of hard-coding its size), simply use ljust:

>>> name = 'Якета'
>>> asterisks = '****************************'
>>> price = 1250.23
>>> padding = 17
>>> print '{0}: {1} {2} €'.format(name.ljust(padding), asterisks, price)
Якета       : **************************** 1250.23 €

Considering the case when the maximum string size is unknown previously and the script must adapt to it, we only need to calculate the maximum string size and place it in padding:

>>> names = ['abc', 'defghijklm', 'op', 'q']
>>> asterisks = '****************************'
>>> price = 1250.23
>>> padding = max(map(len, strings))
>>> for name in names:
        print '{0}: {1} {2} €'.format(name.ljust(padding), asterisks, price)
abc       : **************************** 1250.23 €
defghijklm: **************************** 1250.23 €
op        : **************************** 1250.23 €
q         : **************************** 1250.23 €

This thread has a pretty similar issue.

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4 Comments

Thanks, but this much I figured out. My problem is involving this method in dynamic environment. Let's say we don't know the length of the longest string to be printed, thus we can't hardcode the indents inside the placeholder: {0:17}. Is there a nested placeholder option I can use for this case?
That's what my second example does. Just put your longest string size in the padding variable and everything will be alright and Pythonic. Say you have a strings = ['abc', 'defghijklm', 'op', 'q'] list with all yours strings. Then, the padding can be calculated using padding = max(map(len, strings)), which makes padding = 10.
I've just updated the answer to include this case, Alex
Also, you could consider dynamically creating your placeholders: myplaceholder = '{0:' + str(max(map(len, strings))) + '}' and then call myplaceholder.format(...). I know I've made scripts using this type of formatting to output tables in ASCII.
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I would do something like this (somewhat "hackish"):

  • Get the longest string longest = len(longest_string). If you have your strings in a list then longest = len(max(mylist, key=len)).
  • Calculate for all strings spaces = longest - len(str).
  • Add spaces spaces to every end of string.
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3 Comments

I thought of that, but I figured python has to have something cleaner wot work with.
@Alex I see, well this is the first thing that came to mind - easy to come up with, understand and implement :)
Well thanks. I shall implement it, since I can't think of or find anything I like better so far.

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