Q:

Tabular display of output

What is the best method to create a neat tabular output and also save it the same way into text file ?
Right now I am displaying my output onto IPython console with the following code which provides an output as shown in Figure(1).
outputLine = ["NIST line   CG100    CG050    FactoryCal    HMFW (nm)-original       (SIGMA)         WCalFunctionDerivatives"]
for n, line in enumerate(wlines, 1):
    outputLine.append(" ".join(
        [str(item) for item in [wlines[n-1],peaks[n-1].cg100(),
         peaks[n-1].cgArb(0.5),
         wavelengthToPixel(wlines[n-1], 500, wavep),
         peaks[n-1].getHMFW() / prismpy.wcalfunctionDerivative(results.x, wlines[n-1]), peaks[n-1].getHMFWPixels(), prismpy.wcalfunctionDerivative(results.x, wlines[n-1])]]))

Coming from a Mathematica background, what other methods can I use to display this same output in a neat tabular format ? Thanks in advance.

A:

If you are working with a list of lists, the following approach might be useful:
def col_display(data, file):
    widths = [0] * len(data[0])
    for row in data:
        widths[:] = [max(widths[index], len(str(col))) for index, col in enumerate(row)]
    for row in data:
        output = "  ".join(["%-*s" % (widths[index], col) for index, col in enumerate(row)])
        print(output)       
        file.write(output + '\n')

outputLine = ["NIST line", "CG100", "CG050", "FactoryCal", "HMFW (nm)-original", "(SIGMA)", "WCalFunctionDerivatives"]
wlines = [[123.1234567890] * 7] * 4
lines = [outputLine] + wlines

with open('output.txt', 'w') as f_output:
    col_display(lines, f_output)

Which would display the following, and create a text file with the same contents:
NIST line      CG100          CG050          FactoryCal     HMFW (nm)-original  (SIGMA)        WCalFunctionDerivatives
123.123456789  123.123456789  123.123456789  123.123456789  123.123456789       123.123456789  123.123456789          
123.123456789  123.123456789  123.123456789  123.123456789  123.123456789       123.123456789  123.123456789          
123.123456789  123.123456789  123.123456789  123.123456789  123.123456789       123.123456789  123.123456789          
123.123456789  123.123456789  123.123456789  123.123456789  123.123456789       123.123456789  123.123456789

