title: How to print variable length lists as columns in python?
body: <p>I need a way to print several lists of varying lengths as columns next to each other tab delimited and with the empty cells remaining empty or containing some fill character (e.g "-").</p>
  
  <p>The methods attempted so far have not worked for lists of varying lengths and numpy has not been working as I expected it.</p>
  
  <p>To summarize:</p>
  
  <pre><code>listname = [[1,2,3],[4,5,6,7,8],[9,10,11,12]]
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>printed as such in a .txt file:</p>
  
  <pre><code>1    4    9
  2    5    10
  3    6    11
  -    7    12
  -    8    -
  </code></pre>