How to Print Spaces in Python

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Problem Formulation and Solution Overview

This article will show various ways to print a single or multiple spaces in Python.

Let’s say you have strings and would like to print them out to the terminal by placing a single or multiple spaces between them.

💬 Question: How would we write code to print spaces?

We can accomplish this task by one of the following options:

Method 1: Use replace()

This example uses Python’s replace() method to place a single space character between the fields.

employee = 'James,Smith,Teacher,jsmith@acme.org,Toronto,Canada'
spaced = employee.replace(',', ' ')
print(spaced)

The above code declares a comma-delimited row containing an employee’s data. This data saves to employee.

Next, replace() is appended to employee and two (2) arguments are passed: the string to replace (',') and the string to replace it with (' '). The results save to spaced and are output to the terminal.

James Smith Teacher jsmith@acme.org Toronto Canada

Method 2: Use Multiplication Operator

This example uses the multiplication operator to display x number of spaces between fields (' '*x).

employee = 'James,Smith,Teacher,jsmith@acme.org,Toronto,Canada'
spaced = employee.replace(',', ' '*5)
print(spaced)

The above code declares a comma-delimited row containing an employee’s data. This data saves to employee.

Next, replace() is appended to employee and two (2) arguments are passed:

  • The string to replace (',').
  • The string to replace the above with. Which, in this case, is the space (' ') character multiplied by the number of occurrences (' '*5).

The results save to spaced and are output to the terminal.

James Smith Teacher jsmith@acme.org Toronto Canada

Method 3: Use f string and chr()

This example uses Python’s f-string and chr() to print multiple spaces between two variables.

fname = 'James'
lname = 'Smith'

print(f'{fname} {chr(0x20)*10} {lname}')

The above code declares two (2) variables, fname and lname.

The following line uses the f-string inside the print statement to do the following.

  • Pass the variable fname.
  • Pass the chr(0x20) function, which resolves to the space character and uses multiplication to display this character 10 times.
  • Pass the variable lname.

The results are output to the terminal.

James Smith

Method 4: Use split() and join()

This example uses split() and join() to print multiple spaces between a split string.

employee = 'James Smith Teacher'
print(f'{chr(0x20)*10}'.join(employee.split()))

The above code saves an employee’s data to employee.

The following line uses the f-string in the print statement and does the following.

  • Calls join() and is passed one (1) argument, the string to split. By default, the argument will split on the space (‘ ‘) character unless otherwise specified.
  • Next, the chr() function is called and passed the space character. This character is multiplied by 10 (chr(0x20)*10).
  • The results are 10 spaces between each word in employee.

The results are output to the terminal.

James Smith Teacher

Method 5: Use %s

This example uses the %s format string and the multiplication operator to create spaces between each word.

print("%sJames %sSmith" % (' '*5, ' '*3))

The above code does the following.

  • Defines two (2) %s format strings. This lets Python know to expect two (2) strings.
  • Next, the % operator indicates to Python to expect two (2) arguments, one for each format string which defines the spacing between each string ((' '5, ' '3)).

The results are output to the terminal, and we get five (5) spaces before James and three (3) spaces before Smith.

James Smith

Summary

This article has provided five (5) ways to print spaces to select the best fit for your coding requirements.

Good Luck & Happy Coding!

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