On Friday, Apr 15, 2005, at 18:46 America/Chicago,
tutor-request at python.org wrote:
> I did look at your example about using the longest number, but I
> couldnt really understand all of the code, and ended up deciding to
> arrange it so that the two columns were left-aligned: it looked like
> it would align them down the center in your example? Let me know if I
> am misunderstanding something.
>
Those that are fluent in using the string formatting will groan, but I
usually don't need fancy formatting and can get by with pretty simple
commands. I just printed the first column right formatted and printed
the name right next to it (so it appeared to be left formatted). The
comma in the print statement added the space.
Here is my simple-minded way of thinking about the two column problem:
1) get the data into fixed width strings
2) add those two strings together and print them
Now, as you are seeing, the alignment options for a string will fill in
the padding spaces that you need. Figuring out how long each column
should *minimally* be (based on the actual data) is an extra layer of
difficulty, but to keep it simple you could just pick widths that you
think are reasonable and then do something like this:
###
high = [(1000,"Denise"), (945,"Denise"), (883,"Denise"),
(823,"Grant"), (779,"Aaron"), (702,"Pete"),
(555,"Tom"), (443,"Tom"), (442,"Robin"), (404,"Pete")]
for score, who in high:
col1 = str(score).rjust(10)
col2 = who.rjust(20).replace(' ', '.') #replace spaces with dots
print col1 + col2
###
--the output--
1000..............Denise
945..............Denise
883..............Denise
823...............Grant
779...............Aaron
702................Pete
555.................Tom
443.................Tom
442...............Robin
404................Pete
--end output--