How can I align every word from this list?

Question

I have a list of lists in a file:

[ [ \'aaaaa\', \'bbb\',\'ccccccccc\' ], [ \'aaaaa\', \'bbbbbb\',\'cccccc\' ], [ \'aaa\', \'bbb\',\'ccccccccc\' ] ]

Answer 1

Tested with Python2.7:

lst = [ [ 'aaaaa', 'bbb','ccccccccc' ], [ 'aaaaa', 'bbbbbb','cccccc' ], [ 'aaa', 'bbb','ccccccccc' ] ]

widths = [max(len(j) for j in i) for i in zip(*lst)]
s = ''.join('{{:<{}}}'.format(w+2) for w in widths)

for v in lst:
    print(s.format(*v))

Prints each column aligned to max width of string inside this column + 2 extra characters:

aaaaa  bbb     ccccccccc  
aaaaa  bbbbbb  cccccc     
aaa    bbb     ccccccccc