CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythonjsonprintingconsolepprint
m-ric
m-ric

Reputation: 5901

Inconsistent printing of nested dict using pprint in Python

I used pprint to pretty print a large nested dict:

import pprint
import json


with open('config.json', 'r') as fp:
    conf = fp.read()


pprint.pprint(json.loads(conf))



{u'cust1': {u'videotron': {u'temperature': u'3000K',
                           u'image_file': u'bloup.raw',
                           u'light_intensity': u'20',
                           u'size': [1920, 1080],
                           u'patches': [[94, 19, 247, 77],
                                        [227, 77, 293, 232],
                                        [77, 217, 230, 279],
                                        [30, 66, 93, 211]]}},
 u'cust2': {u'Rogers': {u'accuracy': True,
                        u'bleed': True,
                        u'patches': [[192,
                                      126,
                                      10,
                                      80],
                                     [318,
                                      126,
                                      10,
                                      80], ...

The 2nd level list cust2.Rogers.patches is unfold whereas cust1.videotron.patches is not. I'd like both not to be unfold, i.e. printed on the same line. Does anyone know how?

Upvotes: 2

Views: 310

Answers (2)

Raymond Hettinger
Raymond Hettinger

Reputation: 226376

PrettyPrinter controls

The PrettyPrinter in the pprint module accepts various parameters to control output formatting:

  • indent: the amount of indentation added for each recursive level
  • width: the desired output width is constrained using the width parameter
  • depth: the number of levels which may be printed
  • compact: when true, as many items as will fit within the width will be formatted on each output line

JSON alternative

The json module itself has its own alternative to pprint using json.dumps with the indent parameter set:

>>> print json.dumps(conf, indent=4)
{
    "cust2": {
        "Rogers": {
            "patches": [
                [
                    192, 
                    126, 
                    10, 
                    80
                ], 
       ...

Specific Problem

The 2nd level list cust2.Rogers.patches is unfold whereas cust1.videotron.patches is not. I'd like both not to be unfold, i.e. printed on the same line.

Neither of the above tools lets you directly solve your problem as specified. To get exactly what you want, you will need to write some custom pretty printing code.

Upvotes: 1

Danil Speransky
Danil Speransky

Reputation: 30453

You can play with two parameters: width and compact (the last one may be not available for Python 2).

width -- limits horizontal space.

And here is description for compact:

If compact is false (the default) each item of a long sequence will be formatted on a separate line. If compact is true, as many items as will fit within the width will be formatted on each output line.

But as I understand you can't tell pprint anything about the structure of data and how you want specific elements to be printed.

Upvotes: 1

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