Writing Column Entry Just One Below Another In Python

I have imported a file containing 8 columns, each column separated by '\t', so during import all '\t' are replaced by 'space' and '\n' are split to make indexing easier for me. The

Solution 1:

If I understand you correctly, you can do something simple like this..

>>>s = '''PAIR 1MFK 1 URANIUM 82 HELIUM 112 3.6997  ...PAIR 2JGH 2 PLUTONIUM 98 POTASSIUM 88 5.3003  ...PAIR 345G 3 SODIUM 23 CARBON 14 1.664  ...PAIR 4IG5 4 LITHIUM 82 ARGON 99 2.5506'''>>>ll = [x.split() for x in s.split('\n')]>>>for row in ll:...print''.join(x.ljust(10) for x in row)... 
PAIR      1MFK      1         URANIUM   82        HELIUM    112       3.6997    
PAIR      2JGH      2         PLUTONIUM 98        POTASSIUM 88        5.3003    
PAIR      345G      3         SODIUM    23        CARBON    14        1.664     
PAIR      4IG5      4         LITHIUM   82        ARGON     99        2.5506    

Here I am using a fixed column width of 10 characters. If you like, you can make it slightly more sophisticated by calculating appropriate column widths beforehand.

>>>column_widths = [max(len(x) for x in l) for l inzip(*ll)]>>>for row in ll:...print'  '.join(x.ljust(w) for x,w inzip(row, column_widths))... 
PAIR  1MFK  1  URANIUM    82  HELIUM     112  3.6997
PAIR  2JGH  2  PLUTONIUM  98  POTASSIUM  88   5.3003
PAIR  345G  3  SODIUM     23  CARBON     14   1.664 
PAIR  4IG5  4  LITHIUM    82  ARGON      99   2.5506

Solution 2:

If you don't have too many lists, you could do something like this:

lst1 =  ['PAIR','1MFK','1','URANIUM','82','HELIUM','112','3.6997']
lst2 = 'PAIR 2JGH 2 PLUTONIUM 98 POTASSIUM 88 5.3003'.split(' ')
lst3 = 'PAIR 345G 3 SODIUM 23 CARBON 14 1.664'.split(' ')
lst4 = 'PAIR 4IG5 4 LITHIUM 82 ARGON 99 2.5506'.split(' ')
lsts = [lst1, lst2, lst3, lst4]
sizes = [max(len(item) for item in l) + 2 for l in zip(*lsts)]
for lst in lsts:
    print"".join(word.ljust(sizes[i]) for i, word in enumerate(lst))

OUTPUT

PAIR  1MFK  1  URANIUM    82  HELIUM     1123.6997  
PAIR  2JGH  2  PLUTONIUM  98  POTASSIUM  885.3003  
PAIR  345G  3  SODIUM     23CARBON141.664   
PAIR  4IG5  4  LITHIUM    82  ARGON      992.5506

The benefit of this approach is that you don't have to guess how much you need to pad by.

Solution 3:

I am assuming each line of input becomes a list (lst) for processing. Inside your processing loop you could use formatting directives with your print to line up the output.

Given your current input line/lst:

lst =  ['PAIR', '1MFK', 'URANIUM', '82', 'HELIUM', '112', '3.6997']
final = ' '.join(lst)

then:

print('%8s %8s %10s %4s %10s %5s %10s' % (tuple(final.split())))

You could adjust the field widths to suit your needs.

If you needed numbers to line up you could convert the strings into numbers via int() or float() and then use the appropriate formatting directives to line up the decimal points, for instance using %7.4f for your floats, and %4d for your ints (again, pick values that meet your needs)