Question

I am currently using the following code

print "line 1     line2"
for h, m in zip(human_score, machine_score):
    print "{:5.1f}      {:5.3f}".format(h,m)

But it might not be good practice to just use spaces between “line 1” and “line 2” in the header. And I’m not sure how to add a variable amount of spaces before each row so that I can fit “mean” and “std” at the bottom, and have those two numbers in line with the list above it.

For example, I would like it printed like this:

       Line 1      Line 2
         -6.0      7.200
         -5.0      6.377
        -10.0      14.688
         -5.0      2.580
         -8.0      8.421
         -3.0      2.876
         -6.0      9.812
         -8.0      6.218
         -8.0      15.873
          7.5      -2.805
Mean:  -0.026      7.26 
Std:    2.918      6.3

What’s the most pythonic way of doing this?

Answer 1

Simply use larger field sizes, e.g., for your header use:

print "{:>17} {:>17s}".format('line1', 'line2')

and for your numbers:

print "{:>17.1f}      {:>12.3f}".format(h,m)

your footer:

print 
print "Mean: {:11.2f}      {:12.3f}".format(-0.026, 7.26)
print "Std : {:11.2f}      {:12.3f}".format(2.918, 6.3)

which would give you

            line1             line2
             -6.0             7.200
             -5.0             6.377
            -10.0            14.688
             -5.0             2.580
             -8.0             8.421
             -3.0             2.876
             -6.0             9.812
             -8.0             6.218
             -8.0            15.873
              7.5            -2.805

Mean:       -0.03             7.260
Std :        2.92             6.300

You can adjust the field width values according to your needs.