how to make format operator % work with unicode as expected

[Peter Pei]

I am using things like "%-20s%-60s%-10s" in tkinter listbox to make it look
like a table, with mono sized font like lucie system. But this does not work
with data contains "Les misérables", because it is unicode, and one byte is
not neccessary one character. Now how can I resolve this issue?

My issue is "how to make format operator % work with unicode as expected",
and has nothing to do with tkinter. If I want to use a table widget or
something, I can. But that's not the question.

[Peter Pei]

I probably should mention that what I want is to make all parts of the
string aligned, and look like table. I am not looking for other ways to make
it table-alike, but only interested in making % work with unicode -counting
characters not bytes...

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Sun, 27 Jan 2008 04:06:45 +0000, Peter Pei wrote:

I probably should mention that what I want is to make all parts of the
string aligned, and look like table. I am not looking for other ways to
make it table-alike, but only interested in making % work with unicode
-counting characters not bytes...

% already works with unicode. Just give it unicode arguments:

>>print u"x y z %s 1 2 3" % u"Les misérables"

x y z Les misérables 1 2 3
--
Steven

[Peter Pei]

For sure I can calculate the number of characters and do the padding myself,
but what's the point, and i surely hope that python does it for me.
============
"Peter Pei" <ya****@telus.comwrote in message
news:cjTmj.43610$fj2.37903@edtnps82...

>I am using things like "%-20s%-60s%-10s" in tkinter listbox to make it look
like a table, with mono sized font like lucie system. But this does not
work with data contains "Les misérables", because it is unicode, and one
byte is not neccessary one character. Now how can I resolve this issue?

My issue is "how to make format operator % work with unicode as expected",
and has nothing to do with tkinter. If I want to use a table widget or
something, I can. But that's not the question.

[John Machin]

On Jan 27, 3:06 pm, "Peter Pei" <[e-mail]:

I probably should mention that what I want is to make all parts of the
string aligned, and look like table. I am not looking for other ways to make
it table-alike, but only interested in making % work with unicode -counting
characters not bytes...

Can you show some *code* that demonstrates the alleged problem?
E.g. len("<some format>" % some_unicode) != expected_len

Reading this may help:
http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/bugs.html

[Diez B. Roggisch]

Peter Pei schrieb:

I am using things like "%-20s%-60s%-10s" in tkinter listbox to make it
look like a table, with mono sized font like lucie system. But this does
not work with data contains "Les misérables", because it is unicode, and
one byte is not neccessary one character. Now how can I resolve this issue?

By learning that unicode is not UTF-8, instead of insulting others of
being incompetent.
Diezz