Given amount of spaces needed to be added, format string by adding spaces between words

Question

Given a starter string, and a number of spaces needing to be added to a string, is there an easy way to do this? If the number of spaces is uneven spread, add spaces left to right.

This is what I've tried:

dividing space number with actual string spaces

div = spaces // (word_count - 1)    

tokenize string

temp = st.split() 

for i in range(len(temp)):

If first word just add the current word w/o spaces

if i == 0:

st = temp[0]

If first word just add the current word w/o spaces

else: 

add div amount of spaces + original space to word

st = st + " "*div + " " +temp[i]

update our space count

space_count = space_count - div

space_count matches or is smaller than actual amount of spaces in string

if space_count <= word_count -1: 



st = st.replace(" ", "  ", space_count) 

add an extra space, 'space_count' amount of times. This is where the problem is, it only replaces the first space_count amount of white spaces characters. Any tips on how to add the last spaces, or finding a better way to do this?

Here is an example:

"Algernon. Did you hear what I was playing, Lane?"

and given space_Count = 12, should give

Algernon.   Did   you   hear   what  I  was  playing,  Lane?

Edit: got it working!

Answer 1

I think you're on the right track here, but you seem to be having trouble replacing the rightmost instances rather than the leftmost instances. To replace starting from the right, rather than from the left, you can reverse your string, then do the replace operation, and then reverse it again. In the following snippet I do this by string slicing: sentence[::-1].

So the following snippet first calculates the number of spaces in the original phrase (to be replaced) (num_spaces), then the floor of the number of spaces that need to be added per space in the original (div), and then the number of extra spaces that need to be added from the right (num_extra). Afterwards, it reverses the string and replaces num_extra spaces with ' ' + ' ' * div; that's the original space, plus div more spaces, plus one extra space as a remainder. Then the string is reversed again and the rest of the spaces are replaced with just ' ' + ' ' * div - the same thing but without the remainder space.

def add_spaces(sentence, ct):
    num_spaces = sentence.count(' ')  # find number of spaces in the original phrase
    div = (ct // num_spaces)  # find base of number of spaces to add
    num_extra = ct % num_spaces  # find the number of left-over spaces

    # now use string replacements to re-add the spaces.
    # first, change the rightmost num_extra occurrences to have more spaces,
    #   by reversing the string, doing the replace, and then un-reversing it.
    # this is somewhat of a hacky work-around for replacing starting from right
    new_sentence = sentence[::-1].replace(' ', '  ' + ' ' * div, num_extra)[::-1]
    # then, simply replace the rest of the spaces properly
    new_sentence = new_sentence.replace(' ', ' ' + ' ' * div, num_spaces - num_extra)

    return new_sentence

When I try it in my console, this snippet spits out:

>>> add_spaces("Algernon. Did you hear what I was playing, Lane?", 12)
'Algernon.  Did  you  hear  what   I   was   playing,   Lane?'

Of course, putting the remainder spaces in from the left instead of from the right would return the string you mention in your question. That modification should be straightforward.