Python: Printing ASCII text file using curses library

Question

I'm trying to print a text file that contains ASCII art in python.

I realize the easy way would be do something like this

with open(image, 'r') as f:
for line in f:
    print(line.rstrip())

but I want to print it using the curses library so that I can display other text along with the image. Here is what I've come up with so far.

lines=[]
with open('image.txt',"r",encoding="utf8") as f:
        lines.append(f.readlines())

for a in lines:
    char = str(("".join(a)))
    stdscr.addstr(y, x, char)

This code does 90% of the job but I cant get the image to shift to the right. I can choose which row the image begins on by changing the y in stdscr.addstr(y, x, char) but changing x has no effect on which column it starts in.

Is there a way to fix this? Thanks.

Answer 1

When you call lines.append() , you're taking the entire list returned by f.readlines() , and adding it to lines as a single item. for a in lines , then, loops only once, joining the elements of a (the entire file) back together and passing that to addstr() , which interprets the embedded line feeds, resetting each line after the first to the first column.

Instead of lines.append() , you either want lines.extend() , or, more likely, just lines = f.readlines() . You can then dispense with the join, although you should probably strip the line feeds. Eg:

with open('image.txt',"r",encoding="utf8") as f:
    lines = f.readlines()

for a in lines:
    # set x and y here
    stdscr.addstr(y, x, a.rstrip())