Printing string with two columns

Question

I'm trying to print a string with two fixed columns. For example, I'd like to be able to print:

abc       xyz
abcde     xyz
a         xyz

What is the correct way to format the output string when printing to achieve this? Also, how is this done before version 2.6 and after version 2.6?

Solution 1

You can use format and mention fix spaces between columns

'{0:10}  {1}'.format(s1, s2)

Old Style formatting

'%-10s' '%s' % (s1,s2)

Solution 2

This should work for all lengths of the elements (assuming they are strings. This assumes your data is in two seperate lists first and second.

maxlen = len(max(first, key=len))

for i,j in zip(first, second):
    print "%s\t%s" % (i.ljust(maxlen, " "), j)

This works in Python 2.x, before and after 2.6.

Solution 3

Prior to >=python3.6

s1='albha'
s2='beta'

f'{s1}{s2:>10}'

#output
'albha      beta'