Printing Lists as Tabular Data

Question

I am quite new to Python and I am now struggling with formatting my data nicely for printed output.

I have one list that is used for two headings, and a matrix that

Answer 1

There are some light and useful python packages for this purpose:

1. tabulate: https://pypi.python.org/pypi/tabulate

from tabulate import tabulate
print(tabulate([['Alice', 24], ['Bob', 19]], headers=['Name', 'Age']))

Name      Age
------  -----
Alice      24
Bob        19

tabulate has many options to specify headers and table format.

print(tabulate([['Alice', 24], ['Bob', 19]], headers=['Name', 'Age'], tablefmt='orgtbl'))

| Name   |   Age |
|--------+-------|
| Alice  |    24 |
| Bob    |    19 |

2. PrettyTable: https://pypi.python.org/pypi/PrettyTable

from prettytable import PrettyTable
t = PrettyTable(['Name', 'Age'])
t.add_row(['Alice', 24])
t.add_row(['Bob', 19])
print(t)

+-------+-----+
|  Name | Age |
+-------+-----+
| Alice |  24 |
|  Bob  |  19 |
+-------+-----+

PrettyTable has options to read data from csv, html, sql database. Also you are able to select subset of data, sort table and change table styles.

3. texttable: https://pypi.python.org/pypi/texttable

from texttable import Texttable
t = Texttable()
t.add_rows([['Name', 'Age'], ['Alice', 24], ['Bob', 19]])
print(t.draw())

+-------+-----+
| Name  | Age |
+=======+=====+
| Alice | 24  |
+-------+-----+
| Bob   | 19  |
+-------+-----+

with texttable you can control horizontal/vertical align, border style and data types.

4. termtables: https://github.com/nschloe/termtables

import termtables as tt

string = tt.to_string(
    [["Alice", 24], ["Bob", 19]],
    header=["Name", "Age"],
    style=tt.styles.ascii_thin_double,
    # alignment="ll",
    # padding=(0, 1),
)
print(string)

+-------+-----+
| Name  | Age |
+=======+=====+
| Alice | 24  |
+-------+-----+
| Bob   | 19  |
+-------+-----+

with texttable you can control horizontal/vertical align, border style and data types.

Other options:

• terminaltables Easily draw tables in terminal/console applications from a list of lists of strings. Supports multi-line rows.
• asciitable Asciitable can read and write a wide range of ASCII table formats via built-in Extension Reader Classes.