Printing a grid from a list without \n showing

Question

I have a list of words i.e. [ cat, dog, bird, horse, pig, duck, frog, chicken, sheep, cow] I want to print say nine of them in a grid like this:

cat    dog    horse

bird   pig   duck

frog   chicken  sheep

is there anyway of doing this? Also when I get them to print out o a line I get the \n line break at the end of each item which is so annoying - is there a simple fix for this

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/30870328/how-do-you-put-words-into-a-3x3-grid-using-python/30870561 — Avión, Jun 18 '15 at 08:31
possible duplicate of [Using a text file to lay out a words into a grid form](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/23023403/using-a-text-file-to-lay-out-a-words-into-a-grid-form) — Delimitry, Jun 18 '15 at 08:40
Is there any logic behind your output? and did you gave tried any thing by yourself? — Mazdak, Jun 18 '15 at 08:41
if i import a text file using readlines it adds \n at the end of each word why? — Alan Robinson, Jun 19 '15 at 07:49

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Jun 18 '15 at 08:44

2

Like this:

li = [ 
    'cat', 'dog', 'bird', 
    'horse', 'pig', 'duck', 
    'frog', 'chicken', 'sheep', 
    'cow'
]

lines = [" ".join(li[x:x+3]) for x in xrange(0, len(li), 3)]
for line in lines:
    print line

answered Jun 18 '15 at 08:44

krasem

21
3

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Jun 18 '15 at 08:45

0

I'm assuming those are strings? In that case, you could use a for loop and print the entire string minus the \n characters, something like cat[:-2] for example.

answered Jun 18 '15 at 08:45

Woody1193

7,252
5
40
90

veiset · Answer 3 · 2015-06-18T09:00:08.080

You can do it by finding the longest word (animal name) and using that length as a padding between the words. The following will split the strings in to groups of 3. Any reminding elements after the split will be disregarded:

animals = ['cat', 'dog', 'bird', 'horse', 'pig', 'duck', 'frog', 'chicken', 'sheep', 'cow']
padding = max(map(len, animals)) + 2
groups = zip(*(iter(animals),) * 3)

for group in groups:
    print("".join(("{:%i}" % padding).format(a) for a in group))

score 0 · Answer 4 · answered Jun 18 '15 at 08:51

0

You can iterate through your list in steps, which is number of words per line.

Then I pick the part of the list I want with [start:end] range, and print using join()which will join all items in list with selected string in between them.

Then I move on next part of list.

words = ['a','b','c','d','e','f','g','h','i','j']

def printNum(n, lst):
    start = 0
    end = start + n
    for line in lst[::n]:
        print "\t".join(lst[start:end])
        start = end
        end = start + n
print "3 words per line:"
printNum(3, words)

print "2 words per line:"
printNum(2, words)

Output:

3 words per line:
a       b       c
d       e       f
g       h       i
j

2 words per line:
a       b
c       d
e       f
g       h
i       j

answered Jun 18 '15 at 08:51

ThePavolC

1,693
1
16
26

Do you know why when you read a text file in to a list in python it adds \n at the end of each item. This makes it impossible to search for an item eg cat because it is now cat\n – Alan Robinson Jun 19 '15 at 08:16
You can use `strip()` to remove all special characters from start and end of string. – ThePavolC Jun 19 '15 at 08:40
When you're reading lines from files you can call `strip()` on each line to remove `\n`characters. – ThePavolC Jun 19 '15 at 09:05
ok but it wont modify the actual list which makes it difficult to find items as you have to look for cat\n not cat bizarre language is python v.annoying – Alan Robinson Jun 19 '15 at 09:10
Update your question and show the code you're struggling with. – ThePavolC Jun 19 '15 at 09:21

score 0 · Answer 5 · answered Jun 18 '15 at 09:43

One more solution:

WORDS = ['one', 'two', 'three', 'four', 'five', 'six', 'seven', 'eight', 'nine', 'ten']

# how much words to print out in a table
word_count = 9
# number of words in a row
row_length = 3

words = WORDS[:word_count]
max_word_length = max(len(x) for x in words)

for index, word in enumerate(words):
    word = "{0:>{1}}".format(word, max_word_length + 1)
    if (index + 1) % row_length:
        print word,
    else:
        print word

Printing a grid from a list without \n showing

5 Answers5