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Bell character as Fields separator in Python print output

I am fairly new to Python and need a little help here.
I have a Python script running on Python 2.6 that parses some JSON.
Example Code:
if "prid" in data[p]["prdts"][n]:
print data[p]["products"][n]["prid"],
if "metrics" in data[p]["prdts"][n]:
lenmet = len(data[p]["prdts"][n]["metrics"])
i = 0
while (i < lenmet):
if (data[p]["prdts"][n]["metrics"][i]["metricId"] == "price"):
print data[p]["prdts"][n]["metrics"][i]["metricValue"]["value"]
break
Now, this prints values in 2 columns:
prid price
123 20
234 40
As you see the fields separator above is ' '. How can I put a field separator like BEL character in the output?
Sample expected output:
prid price
123^G20
234^G40

FWIW, your while loop doesn't increment i, so it will loop forever, but I assume that was just a copy & paste error, and I'll ignore it in the rest of my answer.
If you want to use two separate print statements to print your data on one line you can't avoid getting that space produced by the first print statement. Instead, simply save the prid data until you can print it with the price in one go using string concatenation. Eg,
if "prid" in data[p]["prdts"][n]:
prid = [data[p]["products"][n]["prid"]]
if "metrics" in data[p]["prdts"][n]:
lenmet = len(data[p]["prdts"][n]["metrics"])
i = 0
while (i < lenmet):
if (data[p]["prdts"][n]["metrics"][i]["metricId"] == "price"):
price = data[p]["prdts"][n]["metrics"][i]["metricValue"]["value"]
print str(prid) + '\a' + str(price)
break
Note that I'm explicitly converting the prid and price to string. Obviously, if either of those items is already a string then you don't need to wrap it in str(). Normally, we can let print convert objects to string for us, but we can't do
print prid, '\a', price
here because that will give us an unwanted space between each item.
Another approach is to make use of the new print() function, which we can import using a __future__ import at the top of the script, before other imports:
from __future__ import print_function
# ...
if "prid" in data[p]["prdts"][n]:
print(data[p]["products"][n]["prid"], end='\a')
if "metrics" in data[p]["prdts"][n]:
lenmet = len(data[p]["prdts"][n]["metrics"])
i = 0
while (i < lenmet):
if (data[p]["prdts"][n]["metrics"][i]["metricId"] == "price"):
print(data[p]["prdts"][n]["metrics"][i]["metricValue"]["value"])
break
I don't understand why you want to use BEL as a separator rather than something more conventional, eg TAB. The BEL char may print as ^G in your terminal, but it's invisible in mine, and if you save this output to a text file it may not display correctly in a text viewer / editor.
BTW, It would have been better if you posted a Minimal, Complete, Verifiable Example that focuses on your actual printing problem, rather than all that crazy JSON parsing stuff, which just makes your question look more complicated than it really is, and makes it impossible to test your code or their modifications to it.

How would I create a new line in Python?

I am using Python 2.7 and this is what I am working with
print( "Massa: ", line.count("massa"))
# trying to create a new line between these two lines
print( "Lorem: ",line.count("lorem")+1)
I tried this
print( "Massa: ", line.count("massa"))\n( "Lorem: ", line.count("lorem")+1)
and did not get the results I was looking for

If you mean that you want to print it with a single print statement, this will do it.
print "Massa: ", line.count("massa"), "\n", "Lorem: ", line.count("lorem")+1
Since you are using Python 2.7 I removed the enclosing brackets, otherwise the strings are treated as elements of a tuple. I have also added a new line character \n in the middle to separate the output into 2 lines.
If you print the itmes as 2 separate print statements a new line will appear between them:
print "Massa: ", line.count("massa")
print "Lorem: ", line.count("lorem")+1

I think you can just use:
print ""
to print a newline

\n creates a line break. You can pass it as a single string and use format to place your parameters.
print("Massa: {0}\nLorem: {1}".format(line.count("massa"), line.count("lorem")+1))

how to join various bits of string and data together using python

Python newbie here. I've been working my way through this code to basically create a string which includes a date. I have bits of the code working to get the data I want, however I need help formatting to string to tie in the data together.
This is what I have so far:
def get_rectype_count(filename, rectype):
return int(subprocess.check_output('''zcat %s | '''
'''awk 'BEGIN {FS=";"};{print $6}' | '''
'''grep -i %r | wc -l''' %
(filename, rectype), shell=True))
str = "MY VALUES ("
rectypes = 'click', 'bounce'
for myfilename in glob.iglob('*.gz'):
#print (rectypes)
print str.join(rectypes)
print (timestr)
print([get_rectype_count(myfilename, rectype)
for rectype in rectypes])
My output looks like this:
clickMY VALUES (bounce
'2015-07-01'
[222, 0]
I'm trying to create this output file:
MY VALUES ('2015-07-01', click, 222)
MY VALUES ('2015-07-01', bounce, 0)

When you call join on a string it joins together everything in the sequence passed to it, using itself as the separator.
>>> '123'.join(['click', 'bounce'])
click123bounce
Python supports formatting strings using replacement fields:
>>> values = "MY VALUES ('{date}', {rec}, {rec_count})"
>>> values.format(date='2015-07-01', rec='click', rec_count=222)
"MY VALUES ('2015-07-01', click, 222)"
With your code:
for myfilename in glob.iglob('*.gz'):
for rec in rectypes:
rec_count = get_rectype_count(myfilename, rec)
print values.format(date=timestr, rec=rec, rec_count=rec_count)
edit:
If you want to use join, you can join a newline, \n:
>>> print '\n'.join(['line1', 'line2'])
line1
line2
Putting it together:
print '\n'.join(values.format(date=timestr,
rec=rec,
rec_count=get_rectype_count(filename, rec))
for filename in glob.iglob('*.gz')
for rec in rectypes)

try this:
str1 = "MY VALUES ("
rectypes = ['click', 'bounce']
K=[]
for myfilename in glob.iglob('*.gz'):
#print (rectypes)
#print str.join(rectypes)
#print (timestr)
k=([get_rectype_count(myfilename, rectype)
for rectype in rectypes])
for i in range(0,len(rectypes)):
print str1+str(timestr)+","+rectypes[i]+","+str(k[i])+")"

difflib python formatting

I am using this code to find difference between two csv list and hove some formatting questions. This is probably an easy fix, but I am new and trying to learn and having alot of problems.
import difflib
diff=difflib.ndiff(open('test1.csv',"rb").readlines(), open('test2.csv',"rb").readlines())
try:
while 1:
print diff.next(),
except:
pass
the code works fine and I get the output I am looking for as:
Group,Symbol,Total
- Adam,apple,3850
? ^
+ Adam,apple,2850
? ^
bob,orange,-45
bob,lemon,66
bob,appl,-56
bob,,88
My question is how do I clean the formatting up, can I make the Group,Symbol,Total into sperate columns, and the line up the text below?
Also can i change the ? to represent a text I determine? such as test 1 and test 2 representing which sheet it comes from?
thanks for any help

Using difflib.unified_diff gives much cleaner output, see below.
Also, both difflib.ndiff and difflib.unified_diff return a Differ object that is a generator object, which you can directly use in a for loop, and that knows when to quit, so you don't have to handle exceptions yourself. N.B; The comma after line is to prevent print from adding another newline.
import difflib
s1 = ['Adam,apple,3850\n', 'bob,orange,-45\n', 'bob,lemon,66\n',
'bob,appl,-56\n', 'bob,,88\n']
s2 = ['Adam,apple,2850\n', 'bob,orange,-45\n', 'bob,lemon,66\n',
'bob,appl,-56\n', 'bob,,88\n']
for line in difflib.unified_diff(s1, s2, fromfile='test1.csv',
tofile='test2.csv'):
print line,
This gives:
--- test1.csv
+++ test2.csv
## -1,4 +1,4 ##
-Adam,apple,3850
+Adam,apple,2850
bob,orange,-45
bob,lemon,66
bob,appl,-56
So you can clearly see which lines were changed between test1.csv and test1.csv.

To line up the columns, you must use string formatting.
E.g. print "%-20s %-20s %-20s" % (row[0],row[1],row[2]).
To change the ? into any text test you like, you'd use s.replace('any text i like').

Your problem has more to do with the CSV format, since difflib has no idea it's looking at columnar fields. What you need is to figure out into which field the guide is pointing, so that you can adjust it when printing the columns.
If your CSV files are simple, i.e. they don't contain any quoted fields with embedded commas or (shudder) newlines, you can just use split(',') to separate them into fields, and figure out where the guide points as follows:
def align(line, guideline):
"""
Figure out which field the guide (^) points to, and the offset within it.
E.g., if the guide points 3 chars into field 2, return (2, 3)
"""
fields = line.split(',')
guide = guideline.index('^')
f = p = 0
while p + len(fields[f]) < guide:
p += len(fields[f]) + 1 # +1 for the comma
f += 1
offset = guide - p
return f, offset
Now it's easy to show the guide properly. Let's say you want to align your columns by printing everything 12 spaces wide:
diff=difflib.ndiff(...)
for line in diff:
code = line[0] # The diff prefix
print code,
if code == '?':
fld, offset = align(lastline, line[2:])
for f in range(fld):
print "%-12s" % '',
print ' '*offset + '^'
else:
fields = line[2:].rstrip('\r\n').split(',')
for f in fields:
print "%-12s" % f,
print
lastline = line[2:]
Be warned that the only reliable way to parse CSV files is to use the csv module (or a robust alternative); but getting it to play well with the diff format (in full generality) would be a bit of a headache. If you're mainly interested in readability and your CSV isn't too gnarly, you can probably live with an occasional mix-up.

Python Not Web Linking Entire variable in str.ljust

I have Python code that pulls info from a sqlite database and then write to a html file. I'm trying to write as preformatted text and the code below places the text in columns like I am try to accomplish, but (obviously) the link is the entire length of the string, including the whitespace to the right from the .ljust.
How can I get it to only link the text of item.title instead of the entire string, plus whitespace?
content += '%s %s' % (item.slug, str(item.title).ljust(25), item.date.ljust(10)

Edit
title = str(item.title)
spaces = ' '*(25-len(title)) if len(title) <= 25 else ''
'%s%s %s' % (item.slug, title, spaces, item.date.ljust(10))

If you must do it on one line, the following should work for you:
content += '%s %s %s' % tuple(itertools.chain((item.slug,),
str(item.title).ljust(25).split(" ", 1), (item.date.ljust(10),)))
However the following should be a little easier to read
values = [item.slug]
values += str(item.title).ljust(25).split(" ", 1)
values.append(item.date.ljust(10))
content += '%s %s %s' % values
Notice I've added one extra space to your formatting string to make up for the one lost to the string split operation.
EDIT: The above code fails when item.title is greater than 25 characters. A revised version is below.
title, spaces = (str(item.title).ljust(25)+" ").split(" ", 1)
content += '%s%s %s' % (item.slug, title,
spaces, item.date.ljust(10))
This version adds a space to the end of the justified title, so the split operation is guaranteed to return a tuple of length 2.