Printing multiple strings vertically

November 24, 2023

I have a list of string that I would like to print vertically side by side.

from itertools import zip_longest

x = ["Please","help","out"]
string = ''

for word in list_of_words:
    string  += word + " "
for x in zip_longest(*string.split(), fillvalue=' '):
    print (' '.join(x))

this works but I would like to do this without importing anything.

Input: x = ["Please","help","out"]

Output:

    P h o
    l e u 
    e l t
    a p  
    s  
    e

>Solution :

Here’s a simple option:

words = ["Please", "help", "out"]
maxlen = max(len(w) for w in words)

for i in range(maxlen):
    row = []
    for w in words:
        try:
            row.append(w[i])
        except IndexError:
            row.append(' ')
    print(' '.join(row))

Basically, compute the max length of all words. Iterate from 0 to maxlen and try to pick the i-th character from each word. If this fails, use a space instead.