Is there is way to justify substrings while performing join operation

Question

I have to replace a word in a multiline text at specific location specified by a line number and word number in this line. All words all aligned in columns. I'm using an algorithm where I'm finding word by it's coordinates. I'm fetching a line at specified line number, splitting it in separate substrins and replacing a word at specified location with another word. Then I do join (" ".join() ) and writing the modified line back into a file. My problem is i'm loosing words alignment in modified line. How can I justify and join at the same time? (Other words in a line also lose alignment, not just modified word) I think I could do it if I have used a little bit different approach by splitting a line just at the location of the word to be modified, but I did not realized that I will lose alignment after splitting a line at word boundaries.

Accepted Answer

You can apply formatting (with `format()` or `str.format()`) inside a list comprehension before joining: ``` ''.join([format(el, '<10') for el in list_of_strings]) ``` Demo: ``` >>> list_of_strings = ['foo', 'barbaz', 'spam-ham'] >>> ''.join([format(el, '<10') for el in list_of_strings]) 'foo barbaz spam-ham ' ``` `<` left-aligns, `>` right-aligns and `^` centers the text in the given width (10 in the above example). For more detail on how formatting works, see the format specification documentation. Demo with right-adjustment to 4 spaces: ``` >>> list_of_strings = ['foo', 'ba', 'a'] >>> ''.join([format(el, '>4') for el in list_of_strings]) ' foo ba a' ```

Is there is way to justify substrings while performing join operation

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