Formatting a list of text into columns

Question

I\'m trying to output a list of string values into a 2 column format. The standard way of making a list of strings into \"normal text\" is by using the string.join

Answer 1

Here is an extension of the solution provided by gimel, which allows to print equally spaced columns.

def fmtcols(mylist, cols):
    maxwidth = max(map(lambda x: len(x), mylist))
    justifyList = map(lambda x: x.ljust(maxwidth), mylist)
    lines = (' '.join(justifyList[i:i+cols]) 
             for i in xrange(0,len(justifyList),cols))
    print "\n".join(lines)

which returns something like this

ACM:Aircraft Mechanic BC:Body Combat
BIO:Biology CBE:Combat Engineer
CHM:Chemistry CMP:Computers
CRM:Combat Rifeman CVE:Civil Engineer
DIS:Disguise ELC:Electronics ... ...`

Answer 2

data = [ ("1","2"),("3","4") ]
print "\n".join(map("\t".join,data))

Not as flexible as the ActiveState solution, but shorter :-)