CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythonstringformattingalignment
fechnert
fechnert

Reputation: 1242

Special characters break alignment in formatting

Aloha, i've some strings which i'm nicely formatting with str.format() this way:

strings = [
   'Aloha',
   'SomeString',
   'Special ´ char',
   'Numb3rsAndStuff'
]

for string in strings:
    print('> {:<20} | more text <'.format(string))

This gives me this output:

Aloha                | more text <
strings              | more text <
Special ´ char      | more text <
Numb3rs              | more text <

As you can see, the special character breaks the alignment. What can i do about this? I don't want this disrcrepancy ...

Upvotes: 2

Views: 1143

Answers (1)

khelwood
khelwood

Reputation: 59228

Python 2 exhibits this problem if you are using ordinary strings, because the special character you included is represented by the two characters '\xc2\xb4', taking up two spaces. It will work ok if you use unicode strings. That involves putting a u in front of your string literals.

strings = [
   u'Aloha',
   u'SomeString',
   u'Special ´ char',
   u'Numb3rsAndStuff'
]

for string in strings:
    print(u'> {:<20} | more text <'.format(string))

Output:

Aloha                | more text <
SomeString           | more text <
Special ´ char       | more text <
Numb3rsAndStuff      | more text <

In Python 3 this wouldn't happen because all the strings are unicode strings.

Upvotes: 4

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