CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythonpython-2.7dictionary
user3072218
user3072218

Reputation: 11

How to print newlines in a dictionary?

I am attempting to create a query through a dictionary that looks something like this:

Name:name 
ID:id 
Date of Birth:dob

The second name is a preset value that the user typed in through raw_input. Same for the id and the dob.

Here is what my current code looks like:

students[id] = {
    "\nName":name,
    "\nDate of Birth":dob,
    "ID":id, 
    }

And here's how it turns out:

{'\nName': 'Sample Name', '\nDate of Birth': 'Sample Birthdate', 'ID': 'Sample ID'}

I know you need to have /print before a string for the newline to work properly, but I'm not able to use that within the dictionary. Is there a way to bypass this?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 1126

Answers (1)

Jon Clements
Jon Clements

Reputation: 142256

It looks like you're trying to print a dictionary and somehow have it automatically know what formatting you're after. Instead, be explicit about the formatting you require.

Let's start with some sample data:

d = {
    'name': 'bob',
    'dob': 'old',
    'ID': 1
}

Since you're preceding two of the fields with a newline, then I'll take a stab that actually you want the key/value on separate lines in a certain order (ID being first). So, let's set up a format string:

layout = """
    ID: {ID}
    Name: {name}
    Date of Birth: {dob}
"""

We're using a multi-line string here ''' - so that we can build a template like text across multiple lines maintaining readability.

Finally, we use the layout and pass our dictionary to it, and Python will substitute {name} with the value in the dictionary with the key name (and so on...)

print layout.format(**d)

Result:

ID: 1
Name: bob
Date of Birth: old

Upvotes: 6

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