title: Find max length of each column in a list of lists
body: <p>I'm using Python 2.6 along with the xlwt and pyodbc modules to create excel reports from a view on an MS SQL Sever (2008).  In order to programatically set the correct width of each field in excel, I would like to retrieve the maximum length of the values in each column.</p>
  
  <p>For example </p>
  
  <pre><code>foo=[[1, 'This is a test',12039],[12, 'test',1235]]
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Would result in <code>[2,14,5]</code></p>
  
  <p>I'm sure there is an easy solution that I'm just overlooking.</p>