Question 1

How does the columns formatter align text?

Accepted Answer

The formatter pads each cell to the width of the widest item in that column, then aligns the content within that padded space according to the chosen alignment: left-aligned text gets trailing spaces, right-aligned gets leading spaces, and center-aligned gets even spaces on both sides.

Question 2

What is the ideal use case for this tool?

Accepted Answer

This tool works well for formatting lists of items into a tabular layout for documentation, README files, or code comments. It is also useful for generating aligned data tables for CLI output and for aligning configuration values in text files.

Question 3

Can I export the output as a CSV or table?

Accepted Answer

The output is plain text with space-based alignment, not CSV. If you need CSV, use a pipe (|) as the separator and copy into a spreadsheet. For Markdown tables, use | as separator and the output will resemble a Markdown table structure.

Question 4

What happens if the items do not divide evenly into columns?

Accepted Answer

If there are leftover items that do not fill a complete row, the last row will have fewer items and will be left-padded normally. The tool fills rows left-to-right, top-to-bottom.

Question 5

Is there a limit on the number of items or columns?

Accepted Answer

There is no hard limit, but very large datasets may be slow to format in the browser. The maximum column count is 10. For best results, use 2 to 6 columns with items of similar length.

Text Columns Formatter

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