When printing the results of processing some data in python we may need to output them in certain appealing format or with some mathematical precision. In this article we will see what are the different options using which we can output the results.
Using format
In this approach we use the in-built function called format. We use {} for placeholders of values that will be supplied by format. By default the positions will be filled in the same sequence of values coming from format function. But we can also force the values in terms of positions starting with 0 as index.
Example
weather = ['sunny','rainy']
day = ['Mon','Tue','Thu']
print('on {} it will be {}'.format(day[0], weather[1]))
print('on {} it will be {}'.format(day[1], weather[0]))
print('on {} it will be {}'.format(day[2], weather[1]))
# Using positions
print('on {0} it will be {1}'.format(day[0], weather[0]))
print('It will be {1} on {0}'.format(day[2], weather[1]))Running the above code gives us the following result −
Output
on Mon it will be rainy on Tue it will be sunny on Thu it will be rainy on Mon it will be sunny It will be rainy on Thu
Using %
This approach is more suitable for mathematical expressions. We can handle the number of decimal places to be displayed or print only the decimal part of a float. We can also convert the given numbers to octal or exponential values as in scientific notation.
Example
# Print decimals
print("Average age is %1.2f and height of the groups %1.3f" %(18.376, 134.219))
# Print integers
print("Average age is %d and height of the groups %d" %(18.376, 134.219))
#
# Print octal value
print("% 2.7o" % (25))
# print exponential value
print("% 7.4E" % (356.08977))Running the above code gives us the following result −
Output
Average age is 18.38 and height of the groups 134.219 Average age is 18 and height of the groups 134 0000031 3.5609E+02
String Alignment
We can align the outputs which are strings by using the string functions ljust,rjust or center. Besides the input string they can also take in another value which is used for padding the alignment.
Example
strA = "Happy Birthday !" # Aligned at center print(strA.center(40, '~'),'\n') # Printing left aligned print(strA.ljust(40, 'x'),'\n') # Printing right aligned print(strA.rjust(40, '^'),'\n')
Running the above code gives us the following result −
Output
~~~~~~~~~~~~Happy Birthday !~~~~~~~~~~~~ Happy Birthday !xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^Happy Birthday !