Python two text side by side with precise width

Question

I've got an exercise where I have two text, "left" and "right".
I need to make a function to make them side by side given a width as parameter and all of this using itertools and textwrap.
Here's my code :

import textwrap
import itertools

def sidebyside(left,right,width=79):
    width = round((width+1)/2)
    leftwrapped = textwrap.wrap(left,width = width-1)
    
    for i in range(0,len(leftwrapped)):
        leftwrapped[i] = leftwrapped[i].ljust(width)
    
    rightwrapped = textwrap.wrap(right,width = width-1)
    
    for i in range(0,len(rightwrapped)):
        rightwrapped[i] = rightwrapped[i].ljust(width)
    
    pipes = ["|"]*max(len(leftwrapped),len(rightwrapped))
    
    paragraph = itertools.zip_longest(leftwrapped,pipes,rightwrapped, fillvalue="".ljust(width))
    result = ""
    for a in paragraph:
        result = result + a[0] + a[1] + a[2] + "\n"
    
    return(result)

Here's a sample of "left" & "right" :

left = (
    "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. "
    "Sed non risus. "
    "Suspendisse lectus tortor, dignissim sit amet, "
    "adipiscing nec, utilisez sed sin dolor."
)

right = (
    "Morbi venenatis, felis nec pretium euismod, "
    "est mauris finibus risus, consectetur laoreet "
    "sem enim sed arcu. Maecenas sit amet eleifend sem. "
    "Nullam ac libero metus. Praesent ac finibus nulla, vitae molestie dolor."
    " Aliquam vestibulum viverra nisl, id porta mi viverra hendrerit."
    " Ut et porta augue, et convallis ante."
)

My problem is that I'm getting some spacing issues, i.e: for the first line, for a given length of 20, I have this output :

'Lorem     |Morbi ven '

But I need this output :

'Lorem    |Morbi ven'

Answer 1

Found it, my round function was not good, I had to make two width, the first one being the round of the division and a second one being the result of width - round(width/2).
Talk is cheap, code is better :
from itertools import zip_longest import textwrap

def sidebyside(left, right, width=79):
    mid_width = (width - (1 - width%2)) // 2
    return "\n".join(
        f"{l.ljust(mid_width)}|{r.ljust(mid_width)}" 
        for l, r in zip_longest(
            *map(lambda t: textwrap.wrap("".join(t), mid_width), (left, right)),
            fillvalue=""
        )
    )

Answer 2

The goal of the original post was to solve a programming puzzle that required the sidebyside() method be implemented using only itertools.zip_longest() and textwrap.wrap().

This method works but has some disadvantages. For instance, it does not support line breaks, within the left and right texts (all spacing is removed before the texts are reflowed to be side-by-side).

Since this is a really useful method, I wrote an improved version of it, see the Gist itself for more information.

For example:

# some random text
LOREM = "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum."

# split into paragraphs
LOREM_PARA = LOREM.replace(". ", ".\n\n").split("\n")

# arbitrarily truncate the first two lines for text B
TEXT_A = LOREM_PARA[:]
TEXT_B = LOREM_PARA[2:]

# reflow as side-by-side
print(side_by_side(TEXT_A, TEXT_B, width=50, as_string=True))

will output:

Lorem ipsum dolor sit   | Ut enim ad minim
amet, consectetur       | veniam, quis nostrud
adipiscing elit, sed do | exercitation ullamco
eiusmod tempor          | laboris nisi ut aliquip
incididunt ut labore et | ex ea commodo
dolore magna aliqua.    | consequat.
                        | 
Ut enim ad minim        | Duis aute irure dolor
veniam, quis nostrud    | in reprehenderit in
exercitation ullamco    | voluptate velit esse
laboris nisi ut aliquip | cillum dolore eu fugiat
ex ea commodo           | nulla pariatur.
consequat.              | 
                        | Excepteur sint occaecat
Duis aute irure dolor   | cupidatat non proident,
in reprehenderit in     | sunt in culpa qui
voluptate velit esse    | officia deserunt mollit
cillum dolore eu fugiat | anim id est laborum.
nulla pariatur.         | 
                        | 
Excepteur sint occaecat | 
cupidatat non proident, | 
sunt in culpa qui       | 
officia deserunt mollit | 
anim id est laborum.    |