CODEWITHSUNDEEP
python
WOW
WOW

Reputation: 99

Why does my code print twice the amount of spaces I expect?

Python provides a built-in function called len that returns the length of a string, so the value of len('allen') is 5. Write a function named right_justify that takes a string named s as a parameter and prints the string with enough leading spaces so that the last letter of the string is in column 70 of the display.

Author's solution:

def right_justify(s):
        print (' '*(70-len(s))+s)
>>> right_justify('allen')

My solution:

def right_justify(s):
            space_count=70-len(s)
            for i in range(0,space_count,1):
                       print " ",
            print s
strng=raw_input("Enter your desired string:")
print len(strng)
right_justify(strng)

The output of my code is different than the output of author's code: I am getting twice as many spaces, e.g. 130 instead of 65.

But it seems to me that the two pieces of code are logically equivalent. What am I overlooking?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 192

Answers (4)

Alfred de Klerk
Alfred de Klerk

Reputation: 1

I would prefer the function str.rjust(70," ") which does the trick, I think, like so: strng.rjust(70," ")

Upvotes: 0

Al Sweigart
Al Sweigart

Reputation: 12939

Your code has 130 spaces, the author's code has 65 spaces. This is because 

print " ",

...adds a space. What you want is:

print "",

Upvotes: 0

Krumelur
Krumelur

Reputation: 32497

The problem is with your print statement

print " ",

will print two spaces for each iteration of the loop. When terminating the print statement with a comma, subsequent calls will be delimited by a space.

On a side note, another way to define your right_justify function would be

def right_justify(s):
    print '%70s' % s

Upvotes: 2

Tetrinity
Tetrinity

Reputation: 1105

The print " ", line actually prints two spaces (one from the " ", one from the ,). You could replace it with print "", to have your function work identically to the original.

Upvotes: 0

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