CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythonunicodestring-formatting
camomilk
camomilk

Reputation: 763

How to pad and align unicode strings with special characters in python?

Python makes it easy to pad and align ascii strings, like so:

>>> print "%20s and stuff" % ("test")
                test and stuff
>>> print "{:>20} and stuff".format("test")
                test and stuff

But how can I properly pad and align unicode strings containing special characters? I've tried several methods, but none of them seem to work:

#!/usr/bin/env python
# -*- coding: utf-8 -*- 

def manual(data):
    for s in data:
        size = len(s)
        print ' ' * (20 - size) + s + " stuff"

def with_format(data):
    for s in data:
        print " {:>20} stuff".format(s) 

def with_oldstyle(data):   
    for s in data:
        print "%20s stuff" % (s)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    data = ("xTest1x", "ツTestツ", "♠️ Test ♠️", "~Test2~")
    data_utf8 = map(lambda s: s.decode("utf8"), data)

    print "with_format"
    with_format(data)
    print "with_oldstyle"
    with_oldstyle(data)
    print "with_oldstyle utf8"
    with_oldstyle(data_utf8)
    print "manual:"
    manual(data)
    print "manual utf8:"
    manual(data_utf8)

This gives varied output:

with_format
              xTest1x stuff
           ツTestツ stuff
   ♠️ Test ♠️ stuff
              ~Test2~ stuff
with_oldstyle
             xTest1x stuff
          ツTestツ stuff
  ♠️ Test ♠️ stuff
             ~Test2~ stuff
with_oldstyle utf8
             xTest1x stuff
              ツTestツ stuff
          ♠️ Test ♠️ stuff
             ~Test2~ stuff
manual:
             xTest1x stuff
          ツTestツ stuff
  ♠️ Test ♠️ stuff
             ~Test2~ stuff
manual utf8:
             xTest1x stuff
              ツTestツ stuff
          ♠️ Test ♠️ stuff
             ~Test2~ stuff

This is using Python 2.7.

Upvotes: 13

Views: 3236

Answers (1)

robyschek
robyschek

Reputation: 2035

There is wcwidth module available via pip.

test.py:

import wcwidth
def manual_wcwidth(data):
    for s in data:
        size = wcwidth.wcswidth(s)
        print ' ' * (20 - size) + s + " stuff"
data = (u"xTest1x", u"ツTestツ", u"♠️ Test ♠️", u"~Test2~")
manual_wcwidth(data)

In the linux console this script yields for me perfectly aligned lines:

console screenshot

However when I run the script in PyCharm the line with kana is still shifted one character left, so this seems also font and renderer dependent:

pycharm screenshot

Upvotes: 4

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