python spacing issue when printing color to console

Question

Im trying to print colored headers to the console but it seems to be messing with the spacing. Why does it ignore the spacing?

yellow = lambda text: '\033[0;33m' + text + '\033[0m'
print(f"{yellow('Header1'):<15} {'Header2':<15} Header2")

Output:

Header1 Header2         Header2

Answer 1

The issue is the padding you added for the yellow color. Here's what the format string is converted to on line 2:

Initial version

print(f"{yellow('Header1'):<15} {'Header2':<15} Header2")

After yellow('Header1') is evaluated

print(f"{'\033[0;33mHeader1\033[0m':<15} {'Header2':<15} Header2")

You can see that the length is over 15 characters long. Once the statement is printed, your console will convert the special characters and change Header1 to yellow text. To fix the issue, you can add the yellow padding outside of the {'Header1':<15} format.

Something like this could work:

print(yellow(f'{'Header1':<15}') + f' {'Header2':<15} Header2")