How to extend pretty print module to tables?
Question: I have the pretty print module, which I prepared because I was not happy the
pprint module produced zillion lines for list of numbers which had one list of
list. Here is example use of my module.

    
    
        >>> a=range(10)
        >>> a.insert(5,[range(i) for i in range(10)])
        >>> a
        [0, 1, 2, 3, 4, [[], [0], [0, 1], [0, 1, 2], [0, 1, 2, 3], [0, 1, 2, 3, 4], [0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5], [0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6], [0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7], [0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8]], 5, 6, 7, 8, 9]
        >>> import pretty
        >>> pretty.ppr(a,indent=6)
    
        [0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 
              [
                [], 
                [0], 
                [0, 1], 
                [0, 1, 2], 
                [0, 1, 2, 3], 
                [0, 1, 2, 3, 4], 
                [0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5], 
                [0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6], 
                [0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7], 
                [0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8]], 5, 6, 7, 8, 9]
    

Code is like this:

    
    
    """ pretty.py prettyprint module version alpha 0.2
        mypr: pretty string function
        ppr:  print of the pretty string
        ONLY list and tuple prettying implemented!
    """
    def mypr(w, i = 0, indent = 2, nl = '\n') :
        """ w = datastructure, i = indent level, indent = step size for indention """
        startend = {list : '[]', tuple : '()'}
        if type(w) in (list, tuple) :
            start, end = startend[type(w)]
            pr = [mypr(j, i + indent, indent, nl) for j in w]
            return nl + ' ' * i + start + ', '.join(pr) + end
        else :  return repr(w)
    
    def ppr(w, i = 0, indent = 2, nl = '\n') :
        """ see mypr, this is only print of mypr with same parameters """
        print mypr(w, i, indent, nl)
    

Here is one fixed text for table printing in my pretty print module:

    
    
    ## let's do it "manually"
    width = len(str(10+10))
    widthformat = '%'+str(width)+'i'
    for i in range(10):
        for j in range(10):
            print widthformat % (i+j),
        print
    

Have you better alternative for this code to be generalized enough for the
pretty printing module?

What I found for this kind of regular cases after posting the question is this
module: [prettytable A simple Python library for easily displaying tabular
data in a visually appealing ASCII table
format](http://code.google.com/p/prettytable/)


Answer: If you're looking for nice formatting for matrices,
[numpy](http://numpy.scipy.org/)'s output looks great right out of the box:

    
    
    from numpy import *
    print array([[i + j for i in range(10)] for j in range(10)])
    

Output:

    
    
    [[ 0  1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9]
     [ 1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9 10]
     [ 2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9 10 11]
     [ 3  4  5  6  7  8  9 10 11 12]
     [ 4  5  6  7  8  9 10 11 12 13]
     [ 5  6  7  8  9 10 11 12 13 14]
     [ 6  7  8  9 10 11 12 13 14 15]
     [ 7  8  9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16]
     [ 8  9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17]
     [ 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18]]
    

