I came here with the same requirements but @lvc and @Preet's answers seems more inline with what column -t
produces in that columns have different widths:
>>> rows = [ ['a', 'b', 'c', 'd']
... , ['aaaaaaaaaa', 'b', 'c', 'd']
... , ['a', 'bbbbbbbbbb', 'c', 'd']
... ]
...
>>> widths = [max(map(len, col)) for col in zip(*rows)]
>>> for row in rows:
... print " ".join((val.ljust(width) for val, width in zip(row, widths)))
...
a b c d
aaaaaaaaaa b c d
a bbbbbbbbbb c d