splitting list with equal contents

Question

for example I have the following list:

contents= [\"i have two pens\",\"prices = 5$\",\"made in ____ and ____\"]

I want to split them such a wa

Answer 1

This is another choice, May be also complicated.

from itertools import izip_longest

array = [phrase.split() for phrase in contents]
l = izip_longest(*array, fillvalue=u'')
result = [list(t) for t in zip(*l)]

Answer 2

A quick demo to expand on my comment, using izip_longest from itertools:

>>> from itertools import izip_longest
>>> contents = ["i have two pens",
                "prices = 5$",
                "made in ____ and ____"]
>>> array = [phrase.split() for phrase in contents]
>>> for t in izip_longest(*array, fillvalue=" "):
        print t


('i', 'prices', 'made')
('have', '=', 'in')
('two', '5$', '____')
('pens', ' ', 'and')
(' ', ' ', '____')

You don't need to modify array, this pads for you as you iterate over the sublists.

Answer 3

You would need to check which is the longest array and then pad the other ones, like this:

array = [phrase.split() for phrase in contents]
x = max(len(i) for i in array)
result = [i + [''] * (x - len(i)) for i in array]

Complicated but gives you the result you're looking for.