Question

I’m trying to format some strings for output on the command-line, report style, and am looking for the easiest method to format a string such that I can get automatic paragraph formatting.

In perlform formatting is done through the “format” function

format Something =
    Test: @<<<<<<<< @||||| @>>>>>
            $str,     $%,    '$' . int($num)
.

$str = "widget";
$num = $cost/$quantity;
$~ = 'Something';
write;

Variations of the perlform allow texts to be wrapped cleanly, useful for help screens, log reports and such.

Is there a python equivalent? Or a reasonable hack that I could write using Python’s new string format function?

Example output I’d like:

Foobar-Title    Blob
  0123          This is some long text which would wrap
                past the 80 column mark and go onto the
                next line number of times blah blah blah.
  hi there      dito
  something     more text here. more text here. more text
                here.

Answer 1

There isn’t automatic formatting like this built into Python. (The .format function syntax is borrowed from C#.) After all, Perl was “Practical Extraction and Report Language” and Python isn’t designed for formatting reports.

Your output could be done with the textwrap module, e.g.

from textwrap import fill
def formatItem(left, right):
   wrapped = fill(right, width=41, subsequent_indent=' '*15)
   return '  {0:<13}{1}'.format(left, wrapped)

...

>>> print(formatItem('0123', 'This is some long text which would wrap past the 80 column mark and go onto the next line number of times blah blah blah.'))
  0123         This is some long text which would wrap
               past the 80 column mark
               and go onto the next line
               number of times blah blah
               blah.

Note that this assumes the “left” does not span over 1 line. A more general solution would be

from textwrap import wrap
from itertools import zip_longest
def twoColumn(left, right, leftWidth=13, rightWidth=41, indent=2, separation=2):
    lefts = wrap(left, width=leftWidth)
    rights = wrap(right, width=rightWidth)
    results = []
    for l, r in zip_longest(lefts, rights, fillvalue=''):
       results.append('{0:{1}}{2:{5}}{0:{3}}{4}'.format('', indent, l, separation, r, leftWidth))
    return "\n".join(results)

>>> print(twoColumn("I'm trying to format some strings for output on the command-line", "report style, and am looking for the easiest method to format a string such that I can get automatic paragraph formatting."))
  I'm trying to  report style, and am looking for the
  format some    easiest method to format a string such
  strings for    that I can get automatic paragraph
  output on the  formatting.
  command-line