Confused on why I cannot add columnspan to this block of code without python assuming it should be a str instead of an int

Question

First and foremost - a huge shoutout to @Bryan Oakley for helping with a great answer here: [Creating a table look-a-like Tkinter that got me started on solving what I wanted to do in the first place.

Goal: Create a simplistic "character sheet" for my rogue-like game. (super, simplistic text-based game), using Grid Geometry in Tkinter for my UI.

Process: I wanted to learn how to create the the grid like a table and place the stats in each slot (right now I'm just using the place-holder string formatting for ease of reference from Bryan Oakley's earlier answer.)

Problem: I tried to modify lines 8, 29, and 30 to include "columnspan" as an argument. Columnspan is normally an argument that works in a number of widgets to let an item occupy more "slots".

The original code did not have 6 in line 8, columnspan in line 29, and [columnspan] in line 30.

Some things I have tried:

1. I tried commenting-out the for column in range bit in line 25 to remove the weight=1 component of the table. This didn't make any significant impression (actually the code works in its original condition without this at all.)

2. I tried changing the order of the columnspan, value section in line 29 as I thought maybe putting columnspan after the value was causing the problem (it did in fact cause a different problem altogether.) Which is why I now have columnspan before the value.

3. I tried creating a new line within the set method to add columnspan as a configuration to widget.

# begin tkinter sample unit menu
import tkinter as tk

class ExampleApp(tk.Tk):
    def __init__(self):
        tk.Tk.__init__(self)
        t = SimpleTable(self, 4, 6)
        t.pack(side="top", fill="x")
        t.set(0, 0, 6, "Hello, world")

class SimpleTable(tk.Frame):
    def __init__(self, parent, rows=4, columns=6):
        # use black background so it "peeks through" to
        # form grid lines
        tk.Frame.__init__(self, parent, background="black")
        self._widgets = []
        for row in range(rows):
            current_row = []
            for column in range(columns):
                label = tk.Label(self, text="%s/%s" % (row, column),
                                 borderwidth=0, width=10)
                label.grid(row=row, column=column, sticky="nsew", padx=1, pady=1)
                current_row.append(label)
            self._widgets.append(current_row)

        for column in range(columns):
            self.grid_columnconfigure(column, weight=1)


    def set(self, row, column, columnspan, value):
        widget = self._widgets[row][column][columnspan]
        widget.configure(text=value)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    app = ExampleApp()
    app.mainloop()

Expectation: I expected the output to allow the columnspan argument and thus make the entire first column be a single block that would say "Hello, world" across the top.

Result: I receive the following error:

Traceback (most recent call last):

  File "tkintersampleunitmenu.py", line 35, in <module>
    app = ExampleApp()

  File "tkintersampleunitmenu.py", line 8, in __init__
    t.set(0, 0, 6, "Hello, world")

  File "tkintersampleunitmenu.py", line 31, in set
    widget = self._widgets[row][column][columnspan]
  File "/Users/#/anaconda3/lib/python3.6/tkinter/__init__.py", line 1486, in cget

return self.tk.call(self._w, 'cget', '-' + key)

***TypeError: must be str, not int***

What I grasp (or maybe am failing to grasp) is that python is expecting columnspan to be a string? But why? Why wouldn't it look for an integer like with row/column?

Answer 1

When you do widget[x], tkinter treats it like widget.cget(x). You are passing in an integer, and an integer is not a proper argument for cget which expects the name of a widget option (background, borderwidth, etc).