This post originated from an RSS feed registered with PHP Buzz by Jan Schneider. Original Post: width = str(len(str(len(lines)))) Feed Title: Horde News Feed URL: http://janschneider.de/horde/jonah/delivery/rss.php?channel_id=25 Feed Description: News around the Horde Project from my personal point of view Latest PHP Buzz Posts Latest PHP Buzz Posts by Jan Schneider Latest Posts From Horde News

The above monstrosity came up today while writing a function to add zero padded line numbers to a chunk of text:

def linenumbers(text):
    "Add zero padded line numbers to text"
    lines = text.split('\n')
    # Find the maximum 'width' of the line count
    width = str(len(str(len(lines))))
    for i, line in enumerate(lines):
        lines[i] = ("%0" + width  + "d. %s") % (i + 1, line)
    return '\n'.join(lines)

I think it has a pleasant kind of symmetry to it.