Pretty print 2D Python list

To make things interesting, let's try with a bigger matrix:

matrix = [
   ["Ah!",  "We do have some Camembert", "sir"],
   ["It's a bit", "runny", "sir"],
   ["Well,",  "as a matter of fact it's", "very runny, sir"],
   ["I think it's runnier",  "than you",  "like it, sir"]
]

s = [[str(e) for e in row] for row in matrix]
lens = [max(map(len, col)) for col in zip(*s)]
fmt = '\t'.join('{{:{}}}'.format(x) for x in lens)
table = [fmt.format(*row) for row in s]
print '\n'.join(table)

Output:

Ah!                     We do have some Camembert   sir            
It's a bit              runny                       sir            
Well,                   as a matter of fact it's    very runny, sir
I think it's runnier    than you                    like it, sir  

UPD: for multiline cells, something like this should work:

text = [
    ["Ah!",  "We do have\nsome Camembert", "sir"],
    ["It's a bit", "runny", "sir"],
    ["Well,",  "as a matter\nof fact it's", "very runny,\nsir"],
    ["I think it's\nrunnier",  "than you",  "like it,\nsir"]
]

from itertools import chain, izip_longest

matrix = chain.from_iterable(
    izip_longest(
        *(x.splitlines() for x in y), 
        fillvalue='') 
    for y in text)

And then apply the above code.

See also http://pypi.python.org/pypi/texttable

If you can use Pandas (Python Data Analysis Library) you can pretty-print a 2D matrix by converting it to a DataFrame object:

from pandas import *
x = [["A", "B"], ["C", "D"]]
print DataFrame(x)

   0  1
0  A  B
1  C  D

You can always use numpy:

import numpy as np
A = [['A', 'B'], ['C', 'D']]
print(np.matrix(A))

Output:

[['A' 'B']
 ['C' 'D']]