Aligner: Aligning Strings for Aesthetic Output

When printing multiple strings with varying lengths, formatting issues may arise, causing an unaligned appearance. This article introduces two elegant methods, str.format and Python 3's f-strings, to overcome this obstacle and achieve organized output.

Method 1: str.format

str.format allows for flexible alignment of strings using placeholder values. The syntax is {index: alignment width}, where:

• index: Represents the argument's index passed to str.format().
• alignment: Specifies whether the string should be aligned to the left ().
• width: Determines the minimum width of the output string.

For example, the following code prints strings of varying lengths left and right-aligned with a minimum width of 5:

'{0: <5}'.format('s')  # 's    '
'{0: >5}'.format('ss')  # '   ss'

Method 2: Python 3 F-Strings

In Python 3, f-strings provide a convenient way to align strings using the same syntax as str.format. However, no argument's index is specified, and a = symbol is used instead of the colon:

f'{s:>5}'  # '   ss'
f'{s:<5}'  # 's    '