Is there a zip-like function that pads to longest length in Python?

Question

Is there a built-in function that works like zip() but that will pad the results so that the length of the resultant list is the length of the longest input rather

Answer 1

Im using a 2d array but the concept is the similar using python 2.x:

if len(set([len(p) for p in printer])) > 1:
    printer = [column+['']*(max([len(p) for p in printer])-len(column)) for column in printer]