Create nice column output in python

Since Python 2.6+, you can use a format string in the following way to set the columns to a minimum of 20 characters and align text to right.

table_data = [
    ['a', 'b', 'c'],
    ['aaaaaaaaaa', 'b', 'c'], 
    ['a', 'bbbbbbbbbb', 'c']
]
for row in table_data:
    print("{: >20} {: >20} {: >20}".format(*row))

Output:

               a                    b                    c
      aaaaaaaaaa                    b                    c
               a           bbbbbbbbbb                    c

data = [['a', 'b', 'c'], ['aaaaaaaaaa', 'b', 'c'], ['a', 'bbbbbbbbbb', 'c']]

col_width = max(len(word) for row in data for word in row) + 2  # padding
for row in data:
    print "".join(word.ljust(col_width) for word in row)

a            b            c            
aaaaaaaaaa   b            c            
a            bbbbbbbbbb   c   

What this does is calculate the longest data entry to determine the column width, then use .ljust() to add the necessary padding when printing out each column.

I came here with the same requirements but @lvc and @Preet's answers seems more inline with what column -t produces in that columns have different widths:

>>> rows =  [   ['a',           'b',            'c',    'd']
...         ,   ['aaaaaaaaaa',  'b',            'c',    'd']
...         ,   ['a',           'bbbbbbbbbb',   'c',    'd']
...         ]
...

>>> widths = [max(map(len, col)) for col in zip(*rows)]
>>> for row in rows:
...     print "  ".join((val.ljust(width) for val, width in zip(row, widths)))
...
a           b           c  d
aaaaaaaaaa  b           c  d
a           bbbbbbbbbb  c  d