Python’s `str.format()`, fill characters, and ANSI colors

Question

In Python 2, I’m using str.format() to align a bunch of columns of text I’m printing to a terminal. Basically, it’s a table, but I’m not printing any borders o

Answer 1

Python doesn't distinguish between 'normal' characters and ANSI colour codes, which are also characters that the terminal interprets.

In other words, printing '\x1b[92m' to a terminal may change the terminal text colour, Python doesn't see that as anything but a set of 5 characters. If you use print repr(line) instead, python will print the string literal form instead, including using escape codes for non-ASCII printable characters (so the ESC ASCII code, 27, is displayed as \x1b) to see how many have been added.

You'll need to adjust your column alignments manually to allow for those extra characters.

Without your actual code, that's hard for us to help you with though.