How to left align a fixed width string

Question

I just want fixed width columns of text but the strings are all padded right  instead of left      sys stdout write   6s  50s  25s n     code  name  industry     produces  BGA                                BEGA CHEESE LIMITED   Food Beverage  amp  Tobacco BHP                               BHP BILLITON LIMITED                 Materials BGL                               BIGAIR GROUP LIMITED Telecommunication Services BGG           BLACKGOLD INTERNATIONAL HOLDINGS LIMITED                    Energy   but we want  BGA BEGA CHEESE LIMITED                                Food Beverage  amp  Tobacco BHP BHP BILLITON LIMITED                               Materials BGL BIGAIR GROUP LIMITED                               Telecommunication Services BGG BLACKGOLD INTERNATIONAL HOLDINGS LIMITED           Energy

User · Answer

A slightly more readable alternative solution:
sys.stdout.write(code.ljust(5) + name.ljust(20) + industry)

Note that ljust(#ofchars) uses fixed width characters and doesn't dynamically adjust like the other solutions.

User · Answer

I definitely prefer the format method more  as it is very flexible and can be easily extended to your custom classes by defining   format   or the str or repr representations  For the sake of keeping it simple  i am using print in the following examples  which can be replaced by sys stdout write      Simple Examples  alignment   filling    Justify   ALign  left  mid  right  print   0  lt 10   format  Guido          Guido       print   0  gt 10   format  Guido               Guido  print   0  10   format  Guido            Guido       We can add next to the align specifies which are     lt  and  gt  a fill character to replace the space by any other character  print   0   10   format  Guido          Guido         Multiinput examples  align and fill many inputs   print   0   lt 20   1   gt 20   2   20    format  Product    Price    Sum      Product                             Price         Sum                Advanced Examples   If you have your custom classes  you can define it s str or repr representations as follows   class foo object       def   str   self           return       4           def   repr   self           return       12        Now you can use the  s  str  or  r  repr  to tell python to call those defined methods  If nothing is defined  Python defaults to    format   which can be overwritten as well      x   foo    print   0 r  lt 10   format x            12      print   0 s  lt 10   format x            4        Source  Python Essential Reference  David M  Beazley  4th Edition

User · Answer

This version uses the str format method   Python 2 7 and newer  sys stdout write     lt 7    lt 51    lt 25  n  format code  name  industry     Python 2 6 version  sys stdout write   0  lt 7  1  lt 51  2  lt 25  n  format code  name  industry     UPDATE  Previously there was a statement in the docs about the   operator being removed from the language in the future  This statement has been removed from the docs

User · Answer

With the new and popular f-strings in Python 3 6  here is how we left-align say a string with 16 padding length    string    Stack Overflow  print f  string  lt 16      Stack Overflow       If you have variable padding length   k   20 print f  string  lt  k       Stack Overflow            f-strings are more compact

User · Answer

You can prefix the size requirement with - to left-justify   sys stdout write   -6s  -50s  -25s n     code  name  industry

User · Answer

Use -50  instead of  50  They will be aligned to left

User · Answer

This one worked in my python script   print   t -5s  -10s  -10s  -10s  -10s  -10s  -20s      thread 0  thread 1  thread 2  thread 3  thread 4  thread 5  thread 6

User · Answer

sys stdout write   -6s  -50s  -25s n     code  name  industry     on a side note you can make the width variable with  -s   gt  gt  gt  d     - s - s   25  apple  30  something    gt  gt  gt  d  apple                    something

[python] How to left align a fixed width string?

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