[Tutor] Printing multi-line variables horizontally

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Fri, Aug 08, 2014 at 01:50:53AM -0700, Greg Markham wrote:
[...]
> So, how would I get this to display horizontally?
> 
> Like so...
> .-----.   .-----.
> |     |   |o    |
> |  o  |   |     |
> |     |   |    o|
> `-----'   `-----'


Nice question! I recommend that you try to solve the problem yourself, 
if you can, but once you've given it a good solid try, you can have a 
look at my solution and see if you can understand it. Feel free to ask 
questions as needed.


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def expand(rows, width, height):
    """Expand a list of strings to exactly width chars and height rows.

    >>> block = ["abcde",
    ...          "fgh",
    ...          "ijklmno"]
    >>> result = expand(block, 8, 4)
    >>> for row in result:
    ...     print (repr(row))
    ...
    'abcde   '
    'fgh     '
    'ijklmno '
    '        '

    """
    if len(rows) > height:
        raise ValueError('too many rows')
    extra = ['']*(height - len(rows))
    rows = rows + extra
    for i, row in enumerate(rows):
        if len(row) > width:
            raise ValueError('row %d is too wide' % i)
        rows[i] = row + ' '*(width - len(row))
    return rows


def join(strings, sep="  "):
    """Join a list of strings side-by-side, returning a single string.

    >>> a = '''On peut rire de tout,
    ... mais pas avec tout le
    ... monde.
    ... -- Pierre Desproges'''
    >>> b = '''You can laugh about
    ... everything, but not
    ... with everybody.'''
    >>> values = ["Quote:", a, b]
    >>> print (join(values, sep="    "))  #doctest:+NORMALIZE_WHITESPACE
    Quote:    On peut rire de tout,    You can laugh about
              mais pas avec tout le    everything, but not
              monde.                   with everybody.
              -- Pierre Desproges

    """
    blocks = [s.split('\n') for s in strings]
    h = max(len(block) for block in blocks)
    for i, block in enumerate(blocks):
        w = max(len(row) for row in block)
        blocks[i] = expand(block, w, h)
    result = []
    for row in zip(*blocks):
        result.append(sep.join(row))
    return '\n'.join(result)



-- 
Steven