Python utf-8, howto align printout

Question

I have a array containing japanese caracters as well as \"normal\". How do I align the printout of these?

#!/usr/bin/python
# coding=utf-8

a1=[\'する\', \'します         


        

Answer 1

You need to manually build the string and also manually build the format length. There is no easy way for this

The three functions below do this (needs unicodedata):

shortenStringCJK: correctly shorten to a length for fitting in some output (not length cut for getting X characters)

def shortenStringCJK(string, width, placeholder='..'):
# get the length with double byte charactes
string_len_cjk = stringLenCJK(str(string))
# if double byte width is too big
if string_len_cjk > width:
    # set current length and output string
    cur_len = 0
    out_string = ''
    # loop through each character
    for char in str(string):
        # set the current length if we add the character
        cur_len += 2 if unicodedata.east_asian_width(char) in "WF" else 1
        # if the new length is smaller than the output length to shorten too add the char
        if cur_len <= (width - len(placeholder)):
            out_string += char
    # return string with new width and placeholder
    return "{}{}".format(out_string, placeholder)
else:
    return str(string)

stringLenCJK: get correct length (as in space taken on a terminal)

def stringLenCJK(string):
    # return string len including double count for double width characters
    return sum(1 + (unicodedata.east_asian_width(c) in "WF") for c in string)

formatLen: format the length to adjust for width from double byte characters. without this one the length will be unbalanced.

def formatLen(string, length):
    # returns length udpated for string with double byte characters
    # get string length normal, get string length including double byte characters
    # then subtract that from the original length
    return length - (stringLenCJK(string) - len(string))

to then output some string: pre define the format string

format_str = "|{{:<{len}}}|"
format_len = 26
string_len = 26

and output as follows (where _string is the string to output)

print("Normal : {}".format(
    format_str.format(
        len=formatLen(shortenStringCJK(_string, width=string_len), format_len))
    ).format(
        shortenStringCJK(_string, width=string_len)
    )
)