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I'm forming a BeautifulTable table from dict, whose keys are string sets of digits (e.g. "21608", "32099", "02978"). The keys of the dict are to become the first column of my table:

for (key, value) in stations.items():
    table.rows.append([key] + value)          # 'value' is a list, so here I just concatenate [key] and [value1, ..., valueN] to form new list [key, value1, ..., valueN] to add to the table

The problem occurs when I try to print out (to stdout or a txt file) the table using print(table) command.

for (key, value) in stations.items():
    table.rows.append([key] + value)
print(table)

And the problem is: all the first column's sets of digits, that are starting with "0" (e.g. "02978", "02186"), are modified so that the first "0" gets stripped.

enter image description hereThe output table

Then I tried to print out rows one by one convering them to list just after I append them to table:

for (key, value) in stations.items():
    table.rows.append([key] + value)
    print(list(table.rows[-1]))

This output shows data as needed, with no zeroes stripped:

enter image description here

Why this result? The reason is in repr() method of BeautifulTable tables? I don't quite understand why whould it modify in any way the string types during the output. Any ideas, how could I avoid it?

Outlaw
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1 Answers1

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It's being converted into an int/float

The current behaviour is that, if a string can be parsed as a float/int, it will be parsed as a float/int

>>> import beautifultable
>>> table = beautifultable.BeautifulTable()
>>> table.append_row(['foo', '012345'])
>>> print(table)
+-----+-------+
| foo | 12345 |
+-----+-------+

You can use detect_numerics=False to disable this behaviour.

>>> table = beautifultable.BeautifulTable(detect_numerics=False)
>>> table.append_row(['foo', '012345'])
>>> print(table)
+-----+--------+
| foo | 012345 |
+-----+--------+
  • This is the answer, thank you! Although, a minor problem to this option is that now my numerical data in the table sometimes looks like "17.030434782608694", while I need integer or ".0" accuracy. I think I'll manage it with string formatting before forming the table, during computations. – Outlaw Mar 02 '22 at 12:02