T3h Blog

I wanted to make a nice, pretty text file from some log info, but python didn’t want to cooperate with string formatting.

I was trying something like this:
f=open(‘file’,'w’)
f.write(‘%-10s’ %string)

At the interactive prompt, the equivalent print command would give the desired result.

I got it to work by replacing f.write() with
print >> f, mystring.ljust(10)

This code has the same net result of printing to the file, but it actually does the spacing properly.

This thread gave me the hint I needed, though it looks like the poor guy never resolved his issue – he should have tried the print suggestion.

http://bytes.com/groups/python/25205-using-string-ljust-try-hold-fixed-width#links