Python add or insert tab (\t) into list

Python Help
1

Hi All,
I am new to python. I am trying to add a /t to a string variable and insert in to a list.
when I print the string, it prints with tab space.
When the same variable added to the list it prints \t. how to fix it.

str1="new_service_group"
src_grp="servicegroups\t\t\t\t"+str1
print("src_grp is = "+src_grp)
array=['define service{', 'host_name               host-a1p', 'service_description     Disk Space /var', 'use                     ch_rating_system', '}']
array.insert(len(array)-1,src_grp)
print(array)

output:

src_grp is = servicegroups				new_service_group
['define service{', 'host_name               host-a1p', 'service_description     Disk Space /var', 'use                     ch_rating_system', 'servicegroups\t\t\t\tnew_service_group', '}']
2

My advice (FWIW) is not to do that: if you want to present the contents of a list object, formatted in a particular way (be that with tab spaces, or whatever) then introduce the ‘formatting’ when you construct the output, rather then mixing the formatting with the data.

1 Like
3

Hi! Welcome to the Discourse and to Python programming!

What you’re seeing here is the difference between the string form and the representation. Inside a list, you’re seeing the representation (or “repr”) of the strings, which is designed to be similar to source code; it’s also meant to be unambiguous (you can’t confuse tabs and spaces when the tabs are shown as "\t").

So what you want here is to print out a series of things. That’s awesome, Python can do that for you! Here’s one way:

for line in array:
    print(line)

Or alternatively, you can join the parts together. Python has a slightly quirky way of spelling this, but there are good reasons for that:

service_config = " ".join(array)
print(service_config)

Give those two a try and see what you think of them. You may find that they’re not precisely what you want, but you can tweak from there.

Have fun with it!

4

To output object value along with its name one can use f-strings support a handy = specifier for debugging (introduced in Python 3.8):

>>> spam = "bacon and eggs"
>>> print(f"{spam=}")
spam='bacon and eggs'
>>> spam = 6
>>> print(f"{spam=}")
spam=6
5

Hi All,
Thanks for your replies. I got it resolved by using expandtabs()

str1="new_service_group"
src_grp="servicegroups\t\t\t\t"+str1
print("src_grp is = "+src_grp)
array=['define service{', 'host_name               host-a1p', 'service_description     Disk Space /var', 'use                     ch_rating_system', '}']
array.insert(len(array)-1,src_grp.expandtabs())
print(array)

I’ll try to format the values when I print it.