Print three columns vertically separated by space(s)

Question

Task

• Take input string separated by space.
• Sort the words alphabetically.
• Print them out vertically in 3 columns separated by space(s).

Challenge

• All three column's heights should be as evenly weighted as possible.
• All three column's should be left aligned.

This is code-golf, so shortest code wins!

Example

If the input is:

"cat caterpillar pie frog elephant pizza", 

The output should be:

cat         elephant pie
caterpillar frog     pizza

Please beware of cases, if input is:

"a b c d e f g" 

Should be printed as:

a c e
b d f
    g

# or

a d f
b e g
c

# and not

a d g
b e
c f

Answer 1

Husk, 24 17 bytes

TmoTT' §CȯmLTC3Ow

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Explanation

This was a surprisingly tricky challenge, as Husk currently lacks a builtin for breaking a list into a given number of parts.

TmoTT' §CȯmLTC3Ow  Implicit input, say s="bbb a cc ddd e"
                w  Split at spaces: x=["bbb","a","cc","ddd","e"]
             C3    Cut into slices of length 3: [["bbb","a","cc"],["ddd","e"]]
            T      Transpose: [["bbb","ddd"],["a","e"],["cc"]]
         ȯmL       Map length: [2,2,1]
                   These are the correct lengths of the columns.
       §C      O   Sort x and split into these lengths: [["a","bbb"],["cc","ddd"],["e"]]
                   These are the columns of the correct output, without padding.
 mo                For each column,
    T'             transpose and pad with spaces: [["ab"," b"," b"],["cd","cd"," d"],["e"]]
   T               then transpose back: [["a  ","bbb"],["cc ","ddd"],["e"]]
T                  Transpose the whole list: [["a  ","cc ","e"],["bbb","ddd"]]
                   Implicitly join each row by spaces,
                   join the resulting strings by newlines and print.

Answer 2

Jelly, 6 bytes

Ṣœs3ZG

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Answer 3

Python 3, 148 bytes

-6 bytes thanks to ovs.

l=sorted(input().split())
n=-~len(l)//3
f=lambda l:[i.ljust(max(map(len,l)))for i in l+['']]
for i in zip(f(l[:n]),f(l[n:n*2]),f(l[n*2:])):print(*i)

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Workin' on it. Everything I've tried makes the output lopsided...

Answer 4

Mathematica, 115 bytes

Grid[Transpose@PadRight@TakeList[#,Last@IntegerPartitions[Tr[1^#],3]]&@Sort@StringSplit@#/. 0->"",Alignment->Left]&

try it on wolfram sandbox

paste the following code and press shift+enter

Grid[Transpose@PadRight@TakeList[#,Last@IntegerPartitions[Tr[1^#],3]]&@Sort@StringSplit@#/. 0->"",Alignment->Left]&["cat caterpillar pie frog elephant pizza"]

Answer 5

Perl 5, 134 + 1 (-a) = 135 bytes

$.=(sort{$b=~y///c-length$a}(@F=sort@F))[0]=~y///c;@a=splice@F,0,@F/3;@b=splice@F,0,@F/2;printf"%-$.s "x3 .$/,shift@a,shift@b,$_ for@F

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Answer 6

05AB1E, 8 bytes

#{.B3äζ»

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---

#        | Split on spaces.
 {       | Sort aphabetically.
  .B     | Pad to max string length.
    3ä   | Split into columns.
      ζ  | Transpose.
       » | Print with newlines.

Answer 7

Javascript 181 175 bytes

f=a=>(a=a.split` `).sort().map(c=>(t[y]=[...t[y]||[],c],M[x]>(l=c.length)?0:M[x]=l,a[++y*3+x]?y:y=x++*0),M=[t=[x=y=0]])&&t.map(x=>x.map((c,y)=>c.padEnd(M[y])).join` `).join`
`

console.log(f("cat caterpillar pie frog elephant pizza"))
console.log("-------------------")
console.log(f("cat caterpillar pie frog frog123123 pizza"))
console.log("-------------------")
console.log(f("a b c d e f g"))
console.log("-------------------")
console.log(f("a b c d e f"))
console.log("-------------------")
console.log(f("a b c d e"))
console.log("-------------------")
console.log(f("a b c d"))

/*
f=a=>(a=a.split` `).sort().map(c=>((t[y] =t[y]||[])[x]=c,M[x]>(l=c.length)?0:M[x]=l,++y*3+x<a.length?0:y=x++*0),M=[t=[x=y=0]])&&t.map(x=>x.map((c,y)=>c.padEnd(M[y])).join` `).join`\n`

f=a=>(a=a.split` `).sort().map(c=>(t[y]=[...t[y]||[],c],M[x]>(l=c.length)?0:M[x]=l,++y*3+x<a.length?0:y=x++*0),M=[t=[x=y=0]])&&t.map(x=>x.map((c,y)=>c.padEnd(M[y])).join` `).join`\n`

*/

Answer 8

J, 73 bytes

,.@(' ',"1[:>|:)@((](s,(s=.]{.1:),(1:{.~[-2*]))([:<.0.5+%&3))@#];.1])@/:~

I can explain this mess later if someone is interested.

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Answer 9

Charcoal, 65 64 bytes

≔⪪θ ηＦη«⊞υ⌊η≔⟦⟧ηＦ⪪θ ¿¬№υκ⊞ηκ»ＦＥ³✂υ÷×ιＬυ³÷×⊕ιＬυ³Ｉ1«Ｐ⪫ι¶¿ιＭ⊕⌈ＥιＬκ→

Try it online! Link is to verbose version of code. Save 2 bytes if I don't have to handle the case of fewer than 3 words. There's probably a sorting "eval" I should be using... Explanation:

≔⪪θ η

Split the input on spaces.

Ｆη«⊞υ⌊η≔⟦⟧ηＦ⪪θ ¿¬№υκ⊞ηκ»

Sort the array.

ＦＥ³✂υ÷×ιＬυ³÷×⊕ιＬυ³Ｉ1«

Loop over three approximately equal slices of the array. (Ｉ1 should really be ¦¹.)

Ｐ⪫ι¶

Join the slice with newlines and print it without moving the cursor.

¿ιＭ⊕⌈ＥιＬκ→

If the slice is not empty then move right by one more than the length of the longest word in the slice.

Answer 10

358 bytes of minified JS:

function f(b){let d=[,,,],e=b.split(" ").sort(),g=[],h=[];for(var j in e){var k=Math.min(2,Math.floor(j/Math.floor(e.length/3)));d[k]||(d[k]=[],g[k]=e[j].length),d[k].push(e[j]),2==k&&h.push(""),g[k]=Math.max(e[j].length,g[k])}for(var o in g)for(var p=0;p<g[o]+1;p++)for(var q in h)h[q]+=q>=d[o].length||p>=d[o][q].length?" ":d[o][q][p];return h.join("\n")}

function f(b){let d=[,,,],e=b.split(" ").sort(),g=[],h=[];for(var j in e){var k=Math.min(2,Math.floor(j/Math.floor(e.length/3)));d[k]||(d[k]=[],g[k]=e[j].length),d[k].push(e[j]),2==k&&h.push(""),g[k]=Math.max(e[j].length,g[k])}for(var o in g)for(var p=0;p<g[o]+1;p++)for(var q in h)h[q]+=q>=d[o].length||p>=d[o][q].length?" ":d[o][q][p];return h.join("\n")}

console.log(f("cat caterpillar pie frog elephant pizza"));
console.log(f("a b c d e f g"));

Answer 11

GNU sed, 92 + 1 = 93 bytes

+1 bytes for -r flag.

I haven’t golfed this at all, but it turned out to be a lot simpler than I expected.

s/$/ /
s/(\S+ ){1,3}/:&\n/g
:
s/:(\S)/\1:/g
/:\S/!bZ
s/: / &/g
t
:Z
s/: / :/g
t
s/ *:.*$//gm

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Answer 12

Bourne shell, 172 bytes

F=/tmp/t
<$1 tr \  \\n|sort>$F
N=$(wc -w $F|awk '{print $1/3}')
for i in 0 1 2
do
awk 'NR%N==C {print}' N=$N C=$i $F 
done|awk '{printf "%s%s",$1,NR%3?" ":"\n"}'|column -t

It's more readable if formatted conventionally:

#! /bin/sh
F=/tmp/t
<$1 tr \  \\n | sort > $F
N=$(wc -w $F | awk '{print $1/3}')

for i in 0 1 2
do    
    awk -v N=$N -v C=$i 'NR % N == C {print}' $F 
done |
    awk '{printf "%s%s", $1, NR % 3 == 0? "\n" : " " }' | column -t

At the price of scanning the input once per column, it uses no arrays. A more complex awk program could open 3 files (one for every Nth word), processing the input in one pass. Then they could be concatenated and printed using the same last line.

The variable N isn't strictly needed, either; for the price of 4 bytes, we save scanning the input 3 more times.