How to use format function correctly

Question

I've just finished typing up some code for a game I'm working on, however I need to use the "format" function to make the output align properly, I tried using it on this bit of code for example:

 print("    ",humanscore,"    -     ",compscore)

in order to make sure the values of the variables don't shift their position, but it comes up with an error saying "TypeError: format() takes at most 2 arguments (5 given)", So basically I'm just wondering how you use the format function to align lines of code like this. (the spaces inbetween were a cheap way of aligning stuff without the format function. )

Answer 1

print("    {},   -     {}".format(humanscore, compscore))

Assuming your scores are variable and you have this in a for loop.

Answer 2

The format method is called on a string and substitutes formatted quantities into the string at places you indicate with markers using braces ({,}). There's a whole mini-language to Python's new(er) string formatting, but for your purposes, to make the scores align you should decide how many characters the maximum score will take up and use '{:<n>d}' where <n> is that maximum. For example if you won't have (integer) scores higher than 999999,

In [8]: humanscore1 = 12
In [9]: compscore1 = 933
In [10]: humanscore2 = 8872
In [11]: compscore2 = 12212

print('{:6d} - {:6d}'.format(humanscore1, compscore1))
print('{:6d} - {:6d}'.format(humanscore2, compscore2))
    12 -    933
  8872 -  12212

To center the numbers instead of aligning them to the right of their fields, use the ^ specifier:

print('{:^6d} - {:^6d}'.format(humanscore2, compscore2))
print('{:^6d} - {:^6d}'.format(humanscore1, compscore1))
 8872  - 12212 
  12   -  933