This would be really useful for Headers and Numbers. Looks like it's unstable at the moment however: https://doc.rust-lang.org/std/fmt/struct.Formatter.html#method.align

Attempting to compile the "Simple example" section of the README gives the following errors:

error[E0599]: no method named `write_str` found for type `tabwriter::TabWriter<std::vec::Vec<u8>>` in the current scope
  --> src/main.rs:10:4
   |
10 | tw.write_str("
   |    ^^^^^^^^^

error[E0599]: no method named `as_slice` found for type `std::string::String` in the current scope
  --> src/main.rs:20:20
   |
20 | assert_eq!(written.as_slice(), "
   |                    ^^^^^^^^

Why?

The MIT license requires reproducing countless copies of the same copyright
header with different names in the copyright field, for every MIT library in
use. The Apache license does not have this drawback, and has protections from
patent trolls and an explicit contribution licensing clause. However, the
Apache license is incompatible with GPLv2. This is why Rust is dual-licensed as
MIT/Apache (the "primary" license being Apache, MIT only for GPLv2 compat), and
doing so would be wise for this project. This also makes this crate suitable
for inclusion in the Rust standard distribution and other project using dual
MIT/Apache.

How?

To do this, get explicit approval from each contributor of copyrightable work
(as not all contributions qualify for copyright) and then add the following to
your README:

## License

Licensed under either of
 * Apache License, Version 2.0 ([LICENSE-APACHE](LICENSE-APACHE) or http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0)
 * MIT license ([LICENSE-MIT](LICENSE-MIT) or http://opensource.org/licenses/MIT)
at your option.

### Contribution

Unless you explicitly state otherwise, any contribution intentionally submitted
for inclusion in the work by you shall be dual licensed as above, without any
additional terms or conditions.

and in your license headers, use the following boilerplate (based on that used in Rust):

// Copyright (c) 2015 t developers
// Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0
// <LICENSE-APACHE or
// http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0> or the MIT
// license <LICENSE-MIT or http://opensource.org/licenses/MIT>,
// at your option. All files in the project carrying such
// notice may not be copied, modified, or distributed except
// according to those terms.

And don't forget to update the license metadata in your Cargo.toml!

Contributor checkoff

• @BurntSushi

This crate has a small API and is not widely used. With no obvious uptick in usage on the horizon, I suggest we cut a 1.0 release.

I'm trying to use tabwriter inside an impl of std::fmt::Display, and it seems really complex and inefficient. I'm currently doing it like this. Any suggestions on how to clean things up? Ideally I'd like to just write the table directly to the Formatter.

I don't know what the motivation for having the binary in its own directory with its own Cargo.toml is, but I think it makes more sense to just move main.rs to src and delete the other files.

It looks like the minimum padding is one space, with padding(n) giving n+1 spaces of padding? The documentation says otherwise, so I'm a little confused.

use std::io::{Write, stdout};

use tabwriter::TabWriter;

fn main() {
    let mut tw = TabWriter::new(stdout()).padding(0);
    writeln!(tw, "{}\t{}", 1, 2).unwrap();
    tw.flush().unwrap();
}

Outputs "1 2"

The link to the CSV toolkit example in README.md points to https://github.com/BurntSushi/xcsv/blob/master/src/table.rs#L37-L40, but that page does not exist. The file appears to have moved to https://github.com/BurntSushi/xsv/blob/master/src/cmd/table.rs, but I'm not sure what lines should be referenced.

Right alignment of the last column only works when there is a trailing tab on the line. Otherwise the last column is left-aligned which looks strange.
If this is a known restriction and not a bug it could possibly be documented.

Hi,

I have a usecase that I want to add a line in between of some other lines, and I don't want the length of this line to be considered during alignment. Is it possible?

Thanks!

I am trying to combine tabwriter and ansi_term crate to format some text output but tabwriter doesn't seem to handle the ANSI escape code and the formatting fails. I have no idea how this works in detail so I cannot probably provide a fix.

The code:

extern crate tabwriter;
extern crate ansi_term;
use ansi_term::Colour::Red;
use tabwriter::TabWriter;
use std::io::Write;

fn tabify(mut tw: TabWriter<Vec<u8>>, s: &str) -> String {
    write!(&mut tw, "{}", s).unwrap();
    tw.flush().unwrap();
    String::from_utf8(tw.unwrap()).unwrap()
}

fn main() {
    let output = format!("Title1\tTitle2\tTitle3\n{}\t{}\t{}",
                               Red.paint("value1"), Red.paint("value2"), Red.paint("value3"));

    let tw = TabWriter::new(Vec::<u8>::new());
    println!("{}", tabify(tw, &output[..]));
}

The output when running the code above:

Title1         Title2         Title3
value1  value2  value3