title: Using .format() to format a list with field width arguments
body: <p>I recently (finally?) started to use <code>.format()</code> and
  have a perhaps a bit obscure question about it.</p>
  
  <p>Given</p>
  
  <pre><code>res = ['Irene Adler', 35,  24.798]
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>and</p>
  
  <pre><code>(1) print('{0[0]:10s} {0[1]:5d} {0[2]:.2f}'.format(res))
  (2) print('{:{}s} {:{}d} {:{}f}'.format(res[0], 10, res[1], 5, res[2], .2))
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>work great and both print:</p>
  
  <pre><code>Irene Adler    35 24.80
  Irene Adler    35 24.80
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I didn't know that I could deal with lists as in (1) which is neat. I
  had seen about field width arguments (2) with the old <code>%</code> formatting before.</p>
  
  <p>My question is about wanting to do something like this which combines (1) and (2):</p>
  
  <pre><code>(3) print('{0[0]:{}s} {0[1]:{}d} {0[2]:{}f}'.format(res, 10, 5, .2))
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>However, I am unable to do this, and I haven't been able to figure out
  from the documentation if this even possible. It would be nice to just
  supply the list to be printed, and the arguments for width.</p>
  
  <p>By the way, I also tried this (w/o luck):</p>
  
  <pre><code>args = (10, 5, .2)
  (4) print('{0[0]:{}s} {0[1]:{}d} {0[2]:{}f}'.format(res, args))
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>In both instances I got:</p>
  
  <pre><code>D:\Users\blabla\Desktop&gt;python tmp.py
  Traceback (most recent call last):
    File "tmp.py", line 27, in &lt;module&gt;
      print('{0[0]:{}s} {0[1]:{}d} {0[2]:{}f}'.format(res, 10, 5, .2))
  ValueError: cannot switch from manual field specification to automatic field numbering
  
  D:\Users\blabla\Desktop&gt;python tmp.py
  Traceback (most recent call last):
    File "tmp.py", line 35, in &lt;module&gt;
      print('{0[0]:{}s} {0[1]:{}d} {0[2]:{}f}'.format(res, args))
  ValueError: cannot switch from manual field specification to automatic field numbering
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I also tried using <code>zip()</code> to combine the two sequences without luck.</p>
  
  <p><strong>My question is:</strong> </p>
  
  <p>Can I specify a list to be printed effectively doing what I was trying
  to unsuccessfully do in (3) and (4) (clearly if this is possible, I'm
  not using the right syntax) and if so, how?</p>