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+--- Thread: align_columns (/thread-21838.html)
align_columns - Skaperen - Oct-17-2019
i've needed this command many times and only today decided to finally code it. i'm sure it is not as simple or pythonic as it could be. i made it for a command line environment where i can pipe the (non-aligned columns) output of one command to the input of another. it can also take lines from command line arguments. this is untested in Python2.
#!/usr/bin/env python3
# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
from sys import argv,stdin
argv.pop(0)
size = []
hold = []
for data in argv if argv else stdin:
for line in data.splitlines():
cols = tuple(line.split())
hold.append(cols)
x = len(cols)
y = len(size)
if y<x:
size[:] = size+(x-y)*[1]
for n in range(x):
size[n] = max(size[n],len(cols[n]))
for cols in hold:
new = []
n = 0
for col in cols:
if col.isdecimal():
new.append(col.rjust(size[n]))
else:
new.append(col.ljust(size[n]))
n += 1
print(' '.join(new))