Subdividing a column

[deanhystad]

Not too simple, just odd. Ragged rows in a file is not that uncommon, but ragged columns is unusual. I don't see how this can be useful, but I think the code below produces the results you are asking for.

from itertools import islice

data = iter([5, 77, 1, -4, 9, 17, 13, 2, 1, 5, 63, 8])
slices = [4, 2, 4, 1]
columns = [list(islice(data, slice)) for slice in slices]

for r in range(max(slices)):
    row = ['' if r >= len(column) else f'{column[r]}' for column in columns]
    print('\t'.join(row))