Text Alignment in Python

There are methods in python on str class which are used to adjust the padding on texts. Ex:

hello = 'Hello'
print(hello.ljust(21, '-'))
print(hello.center(21, '-'))
print(hello.rjust(21, '-'))

#Expected output for this would be
Hello---------------- # (for ljust method)
--------Hello-------- # (for center method)
----------------Hello # (for rjust method)

Methods for padding

ljust, rjust, center these methods are used on string data type for adjusting left, right and center padding respectively for a string or text

Syntax for methods are

• ljust(width, character)

• rjust(width, character)

• center(width, character)

width is total size of container and character is the char that should be filled in empty space if text size is less than width. Default value of character is space

Example for simple usages

1. Building a menu for a game

   Generally, when we see any game menu, we see a similar kind of texts like the one given below

   New Game

   Continue

   Options

   This could be performed in python using these methods.

    menu = ["New Game", "Load Game", "Options"]
    width = 30
    for item in menu:
        centered_item = item.center(width)
        print(centered_item)
   

2. Let's take a hypothetical situations where you need to align some text as per the given problem statements, (say in any interview or there is a hackerrank question on it.)

    door_mat = '' # final door mat design to return
    welcome = 'WELCOME' # 'Welcome' string to be used
    design = '.|.' # we can use this particular design
    (n,m) = input().split(' ') 
    mid = int(n)//2 # finding mid point of all rows
    for i in range(int(n)):
        if i < mid:
            # design*odd number in increasing format till mid value
            door_mat += (design*(2*i+1)).center(int(m), '-') + '\n'
        elif i == mid:
            # center the welcome string 
            door_mat += welcome.center(int(m), '-') + '\n'
        else:
            # help_design_value is for generating odd number of design in reverse order
            help_design_value = int(n) - i - 1
            door_mat += (design*(2*help_design_value+1)).center(int(m), '-') + '\n'
   
    print(door_mat)
   

There are so many other uses like making report, generating table headers etc.