# Write fixed-width table
**URL:** https://discourse.julialang.org/t/write-fixed-width-table/23689
**Category:** General Usage
**Created:** [April 30, 2019, 8:05am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/write-fixed-width-table/23689 "2019-04-30T08:05:06Z")
**Posts on this page:** 8
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@aplavin](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/aplavin)
#### Post date: [April 30, 2019, 8:05am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/write-fixed-width-table/23689/1 "2019-04-30T08:05:06Z")
Hi! I cannot find a simple way to write a dataframe/array of tuples/… to file with fixed-width columns. `CSV` package does not support fixed width or formatting in general; manually looping over rows and calling `@sprintf` makes it really verbose and error-prone to handle `missing`s - not even talking about manually changing the code each time a column is added/removed.
Am I missing something here?
---
### Author:  [@tamasgal](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/tamasgal)
#### Post date: [April 30, 2019, 8:24am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/write-fixed-width-table/23689/2 "2019-04-30T08:24:02Z")
Have you tried this package? [https://github.com/ronisbr/PrettyTables.jl](https://github.com/ronisbr/PrettyTables.jl)
---
### Author:  [@aplavin](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/aplavin)
#### Post date: [May 2, 2019, 1:46pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/write-fixed-width-table/23689/3 "2019-05-02T13:46:16Z")
Thanks for suggestion, it mostly works for simple scenarios!
However, anything even slightly more complicated requires much more code, and becomes more and more verbose with repetitions:
```julia
data = [[rand() < 0.8 ? (col == "C" ? "Abc" : rand()) : missing for a = 0:10] for col = ["A", "B", "C"]];
df = DataFrame(data)
my_format(x::Float64, _) = @sprintf("%.2f", x)
my_format(x::String, _) = x
my_format(::Missing, _) = ""
pretty_table(df, borderless; formatter=Dict(0 => my_format, 2 => (x, _) -> ismissing(x) ? "" : @sprintf("%.5f", x)))
```
---
### Author:  [@tamasgal](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/tamasgal)
#### Post date: [May 3, 2019, 3:22pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/write-fixed-width-table/23689/4 "2019-05-03T15:22:06Z")
Repetitions are a sign that you might write your own macros 😉
---
### Author:  [@Tamas\_Papp](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Tamas_Papp)
#### Post date: [May 3, 2019, 3:30pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/write-fixed-width-table/23689/5 "2019-05-03T15:30:15Z")
> [@aplavin](#):
>
> becomes more and more verbose with repetitions
Can you clarify where? I find the above code quite compact and readable. You can always introduce a function that wraps a function to ignore the second argument to get rid of the `_`s, but here the gain is minor.
---
### Author:  [@aplavin](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/aplavin)
#### Post date: [May 3, 2019, 3:37pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/write-fixed-width-table/23689/6 "2019-05-03T15:37:53Z")
Compare
```julia
my_format(x::Float64, _) = @sprintf("%.2f", x)
my_format(x::String, _) = x
my_format(::Missing, _) = ""
pretty_table(df, borderless; formatter=Dict(
0 => my_format,
2 => (x, _) -> ismissing(x) ? "" : @sprintf("%.5f", x),
3 => (x, _) -> ismissing(x) ? "" : @sprintf("%.4f", x),
7 => (x, _) -> ismissing(x) ? "" : @sprintf("%.3f", x)))
```
to this (hypothetical) example:
```julia
pretty_table(df, borderless; format=Dict(
Missing => "", Real => "%.2f", String => "%s",
:x2 => "%.5f", :x3 => "%.4f", :x7 => "%.4f"))
```
or something along these lines.
---
### Author:  [@Tamas\_Papp](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Tamas_Papp)
#### Post date: [May 3, 2019, 3:50pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/write-fixed-width-table/23689/7 "2019-05-03T15:50:23Z")
There are two (orthogonal) improvements that could be made here:
1. As @tamasgal suggested, define a macro that transforms `@myformatter "%2f"` to `(x, _) -> ismissing(x) ? "" : @sprintf("%.5f", x)` etc. This is quite easy to do. If you use something like `Formatting.sprintf1`, it does not even have to be a macro.
2. Open an issue in PrettyTables, asking for lookup by column.
---
### Author:  [@andrewkhardy](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/andrewkhardy)
#### Post date: [May 3, 2023, 3:09pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/write-fixed-width-table/23689/8 "2023-05-03T15:09:29Z")
@tamasgal @Tamas_Papp
The discussion here did not answer my question, so I’ve made a new thread [here](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/creating-fixed-width-output-files/98260), but if there’s a simpler solution you can provide, I would be happy to close it.