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

When I do this, I like to have some control over the details of how the table is formatted. In particular, I want header cells to have a different format than body cells, and the table column widths to only be as wide as each one needs to be. Here's my solution:

def format_matrix(header, matrix,
                  top_format, left_format, cell_format, row_delim, col_delim):
    table = [[''] + header] + [[name] + row for name, row in zip(header, matrix)]
    table_format = [['{:^{}}'] + len(header) * [top_format]] \
                 + len(matrix) * [[left_format] + len(header) * [cell_format]]
    col_widths = [max(
                      len(format.format(cell, 0))
                      for format, cell in zip(col_format, col))
                  for col_format, col in zip(zip(*table_format), zip(*table))]
    return row_delim.join(
               col_delim.join(
                   format.format(cell, width)
                   for format, cell, width in zip(row_format, row, col_widths))
               for row_format, row in zip(table_format, table))

print format_matrix(['Man Utd', 'Man City', 'T Hotspur', 'Really Long Column'],
                    [[1, 2, 1, -1], [0, 1, 0, 5], [2, 4, 2, 2], [0, 1, 0, 6]],
                    '{:^{}}', '{:<{}}', '{:>{}.3f}', '\n', ' | ')

Here's the output:

                   | Man Utd | Man City | T Hotspur | Really Long Column
Man Utd            |   1.000 |    2.000 |     1.000 |             -1.000
Man City           |   0.000 |    1.000 |     0.000 |              5.000
T Hotspur          |   2.000 |    4.000 |     2.000 |              2.000
Really Long Column |   0.000 |    1.000 |     0.000 |              6.000