Justify strings

Python provides functions for justifying strings, enabling text padding to make aligning various strings much easier.

Below is an example of str.ljust and str.rjust:

interstates_lengths = {
    5: (1381, 2222),
    19: (63, 102),
    40: (2555, 4112),
    93: (189,305),
}
for road, length in interstates_lengths.items():
    miles,kms = length
    print('{} -> {} mi. ({} km.)'.format(str(road).rjust(4), str(miles).ljust(4), str(kms).ljust(4)))

40 -> 2555 mi. (4112 km.)
19 -> 63   mi. (102  km.)
 5 -> 1381 mi. (2222 km.)
93 -> 189  mi. (305  km.)

ljust and rjust are very similar. Both have a width parameter and an optional fillchar parameter. Any string created by these functions is at least as long as the width parameter that was passed into the function. If the string is longer than width alread, it is not truncated. The fillchar argument, which defaults to the space character ' ' must be a single character, not a multicharacter string.

The ljust function pads the end of the string it is called on with the fillchar until it is width characters long. The rjust function pads the beginning of the string in a similar fashion. Therefore, the l and r in the names of these functions refer to the side that the original string, not the fillchar, is positioned in the output string.