EDIT 2013-12-11 - This answer is very old. It is still valid and correct, but people looking at this should prefer the new format syntax.

You can use string formatting like this:

>>> print '%5s' % 'aa'
   aa
>>> print '%5s' % 'aaa'
  aaa
>>> print '%5s' % 'aaaa'
 aaaa
>>> print '%5s' % 'aaaaa'
aaaaa

Basically:

• the % character informs python it will have to substitute something to a token
• the s character informs python the token will be a string
• the 5 (or whatever number you wish) informs python to pad the string with spaces up to 5 characters.

In your specific case a possible implementation could look like:

>>> dict_ = {'a': 1, 'ab': 1, 'abc': 1}
>>> for item in dict_.items():
...     print 'value %3s - num of occurances = %d' % item # %d is the token of integers
... 
value   a - num of occurances = 1
value  ab - num of occurances = 1
value abc - num of occurances = 1

SIDE NOTE: Just wondered if you are aware of the existence of the itertools module. For example you could obtain a list of all your combinations in one line with:

>>> [''.join(perm) for i in range(1, len(s)) for perm in it.permutations(s, i)]
['a', 'b', 'c', 'd', 'ab', 'ac', 'ad', 'ba', 'bc', 'bd', 'ca', 'cb', 'cd', 'da', 'db', 'dc', 'abc', 'abd', 'acb', 'acd', 'adb', 'adc', 'bac', 'bad', 'bca', 'bcd', 'bda', 'bdc', 'cab', 'cad', 'cba', 'cbd', 'cda', 'cdb', 'dab', 'dac', 'dba', 'dbc', 'dca', 'dcb']

and you could get the number of occurrences by using combinations in conjunction with count().

I think what you are looking for is simply print(f'{"string":15}|')

When it comes to float numbers, you can use format specifiers:

f'{value:<width>.<precision>}'

where:

• value is any expression that evaluates to a number
• width specifies the number of characters used in total to display, but if value needs more space than the width specifies then the additional space is used.
• precision indicates the number of characters used after the decimal point

What you are missing is the type specifier for your decimal value. In this link, you an find the available presentation types for floating point and decimal.

Here you have some examples, using the f (Fixed point) presentation type:

# notice that it adds spaces to reach the number of characters specified by width
In [1]: f'{1 + 3 * 1.5:10.3f}'
Out[1]: '     5.500'

# notice that it uses more characters than the ones specified in width
In [2]: f'{3000 + 3 ** (1 / 2):2.1f}' 
Out[2]: '3001.7'

In [3]: f'{1.2345 + 4 ** (1 / 2):9.6f}'
Out[3]: ' 3.234500'

# omitting width but providing precision will use the required characters to display the number with the the specified decimal places
In [4]: f'{1.2345 + 3 * 2:.3f}' 
Out[4]: '7.234'

# not specifying the format will display the number with as many digits as Python calculates
In [5]: f'{1.2345 + 3 * 0.5}'
Out[5]: '2.7344999999999997'