Python 3.9 - How to print and format a .txt file?

Question

How would I define a function so that the text file may printed out in a particular way without changing the contents of the file? Or perhaps what would be a more efficient method of going about this?

Text file:

menu.txt
Cheese Burger, 5.00
Chicken Burger, 4.50
Fries, 2.00
Onion Rings, 2.50
Drinks, 1.50

Desired output:

1.  Cheese Burger           5.00
2.  Chicken Burger          4.50        
3.  Fries                   2.00
4.  Onion Rings             2.50
5.  Drinks                  1.50

Answer 1

You can use enumerate to get that serial numbers starting from 1 .

To print the output the way you mentioned you need to use String formatting - Docs

I have used {item:25} - This will make the item to be of width 25. You can put whatever number you wish to get desired space.

From the Docs:

Passing an integer after the ':' will cause that field to be a minimum number of characters wide. This is useful for making columns line up.

with open('menu.txt', 'r') as f:
    lines = f.readlines()
    for i,v in enumerate(lines,1):
        item, price = v.strip('\n').split(',')
        print(f'{i}. {item:25}{price}')

Output

1. Cheese Burger             5.00
2. Chicken Burger            4.50
3. Fries                     2.00
4. Onion Rings               2.50
5. Drinks                    1.50

Answer 2

You should open file in read ("r") mode to use it without changing. ./Menu.txt means the file and .py file are in the same folder. You can write exact path instead of "./Menu.txt".

file = open("./Menu.txt", "r")

lines = file.readlines()
file.close()
num_of_line = 1

for line in lines:
    res = line.split(", ")
    print(num_of_line, end=". ")
    print(f"{res[0] : <20}{res[1] : ^5}")
    num_of_line += 1