Align strings over a common character

Question

I am looking for a simple, pythonic way of doing this with the minimum calculations and loops.

I have a bunch of strings, such as:

1 + 2 = 3

2*6 + 13 = 25

What I would like to print at the screen is:

xxx1 + 2 = 3

2*6 + 13 = 25

(where the x are actually spaces, but I could not figure out how to show it with this editor)

I am aware of string formatting with left and right align but this imply for each string to compute the number of spaces to add, convert it into a string, and inject this into the string alignment formatter, which seems complex.

Is there a simpler way?

what have you tried so far? – JacobIRR Nov 05 '20 at 16:29 — JacobIRR, Nov 05 '20 at 16:29
show your code and output. also, show us some string data. – harshil suthar Nov 05 '20 at 16:33 — harshil suthar, Nov 05 '20 at 16:33

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Nov 05 '20 at 16:37

1

Based on the information you provided, this may work:

lst = [
'1 + 2 = 3',
'2*6 + 13 = 25',
'2*6 = 12',
'2 = 12 - 10'
]

mxleft = max([e.index('=') for e in lst])

l2 = [e.split('=')[0].rjust(mxleft) + '=' + e.split('=')[1] for e in lst]

print('\n'.join(l2))

Output

   1 + 2 = 3
2*6 + 13 = 25
     2*6 = 12
       2 = 12 - 10

answered Nov 05 '20 at 16:37

Mike67

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Thank you it works perfectly, rjust was the method I was missing – Milan Nov 07 '20 at 14:14

Flavio Moraes · Answer 2 · 2020-11-05T16:47:53.757

0

if you know the maximum size of string before the equal signal you can split the string int the signal and then joint it using the format method (https://pyformat.info/). If you don't know you will have to check for it first and the best way to do this depends on how you are storing your strings.

string = '1+4+3=2'
split = string.split('=')

new_string = '{:>10}={}'.format(*split)

edited Nov 05 '20 at 16:47

answered Nov 05 '20 at 16:34

Flavio Moraes

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Align strings over a common character

2 Answers2