[Tutor] print formatting, length of string

[Lloyd Kvam]

(complete this time.  Earlier email was sent by accident.)

<Totally untested, but (hopefully) close>
def formatListOfRecordDicts(listOfRecordDicts, showKeyList=None):
	if showKeyList is None:
		showKeyList = listOfRecordDicts[0].keys() # fails on empty list
	keylen = max([len(k) for k in showKeyList])
	for i,recordDict in enumerate(listOfRecordDicts):
		print "**** %s. row *****" % (i+1)
		for k in showKeyList:
			print "%*s: %s" % (keylen, k, recordDict[k])


Choosing the keys to print is now outside the function
enumerate is used to count the dictionaries in the list
the key list is scanned to determine the longest key
The format operator is used to control the output width



On Mon, 2004-06-28 at 13:40, tpc at csua.berkeley.edu wrote:

> <code>
> def formatListOfRecordDicts(listOfRecordDicts):
>         count = 0
>         for recordDict in listOfRecordDicts:
>                 count += 1
>                 print "*************************** % s. row ***************************" % count
>                 print "   First_Name:", recordDict['First_Name']
>                 print "    Last_Name:", recordDict['Last_Name']
>                 print "Address_Line1:", recordDict['Address_Line1']
> </code>
> 
> and as you can imagine I'd have to rewrite it if and when I decide to pull
> out a different set of data from my database.  Is there a more elegant way
> of doing this ?
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Tutor maillist  -  Tutor at python.org
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Lloyd Kvam
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