Table with fixed columns

[Mike2607]

I am trying to print a table from a file with fixed columns. I have the initial part down but I am not sure where to begin to break down the data into tables and columns?

raw data in the file is this
William,180, 1st place, 250, 390, 400
tim,182, 2nd place, 160, 380, 400
billy,187, 3rd place, 175, 325, 250
tom,185, 4th place, 150, 300, 200

#column are name, wt, place, deadlift, squat, benchpress

rfile = open("finishers.txt", "r")
file = rfile.readlines()


for line in file:
    values = line.split(',')
    print (values)
    




rfile.close()

Output:
 desired out put
Name	 WT	Place		Deadlift	Squat  	Benchpress
William	 180 	1st place 	250 		390 	400
tim	 182 	2nd place 	160 		380 	400
billy	 187	3rd place	175 		325 	250
tom	 185 	4th place 	150		300	200  

[ichabod801]

First you need to determine the column widths. Load the data into a list of lists. Then loop through it and determine the widest string in each column (include the column headers when doing this). Then decide how wide your gutter is (the space between columns).

The easy way to do this is with the format method of strings, or the even newer f-string syntax (Python 3.6+). There you can set the width of each field, and create a template for printing each line.

If that is not available because this is homework, loop through the lines. Print each column in that line, plus a number of spaces to fill out to the column width, plus a number of spaces for the gutter. Use the end = '' parameter to print to keep it going to the next line between columns, and then end the line with a plain print().

[Mike2607]

Ok that is somewhat helpful. I have heard this list of list before but I have never done it from a txt or csv file. is there any documentation you can point me to how after I read the data to put it into a list of list?

[ichabod801]

Using your code:

data = []
for line in file:
    values = line.split(',')
    data.append(values)

That will give you a list of lists. Then data[0] is the first row, and data[0][1] is the second item in the first row.