Printing Tic Tac Toe game board?

Question

I'm making a tic tac toe game in python and I have all of the actual game play functions working properly but I can't get the game board to print correctly.

game = [[' ',' ',' '],[' ',' ',' '],[' ',' ',' ']]
for row in game:
  print('   |'*(len(game)-1)+'   ')
  for space in row:
    print(' '+space+' |',end='')
  print('\n'+'   |'*(len(game)-1)+'   ')
  if game.index(row) < len(game)-1:
    print('----'+('----'*(len(game)-2))+'---')

for some reason the row index isn't incrimenting unless there's a move in each row. When the game begins empty the output is:

   |   |   
   |   |   |
   |   |   
-----------
   |   |   
   |   |   |
   |   |   
-----------
   |   |   
   |   |   |
   |   |   
-----------

There shouldn't be a line along the bottom but it goes away when there's a move in each row. I'm also trying to get rid of the ' |'in the middle of each space on the right. Any tips or suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

Use [string formatting](https://docs.python.org/3/library/stdtypes.html#str.format): [Format String Syntax](https://docs.python.org/3/library/string.html#formatstrings), [*f-strings*](https://docs.python.org/3/reference/lexical_analysis.html#f-strings). — wwii, Nov 11 '19 at 16:52

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Nov 11 '19 at 17:30

I think you should do string formatting as suggested before me.

Though my solution greatly differs from your code, here is a piece of function that prints (creates string, then prints that string) a general board with the tiles separated by | and each row separated by -. Each element in myboard will be placed in the middle of a tile_width space.

def print_board(myboard, tile_width=3):
    msg = ""
    for i, row in enumerate(myboard):
        # Print row
        element = row[0]  # first element does not need leading |
        element_str = '{:^{width}}'.format(element, width=tile_width)
        msg = msg + element_str

        for element in row[1:]:
            element_str = '|{:^{width}}'.format(element, width=tile_width)  # elements with leading |
            msg = msg + element_str

        msg = msg + '\n'

        # Print row divider if its not the last row
        if i is not len(myboard) - 1:
            element_str = '{:-^{width}}'.format("", width=((tile_width + 1) * len(row) - 1))  # '*' as fill char
            msg = msg + element_str
            msg = msg + '\n'
    print(msg)


cur = [['x', ' ', 'x'], [' ', 'o', ' '], ['o', '', ' ']]
print_board(cur)

This outputs this.

 x |   | x 
-----------
   | o |   
-----------
 o |   |

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Nov 11 '19 at 17:20

The problem seems to be that you are using the index method instead of something like enumerate. index returns the position of a given element in a list, whereas enumerate can be used to do more of what you want (see Accessing the index in 'for' loops?). When you use index(row), you are asking for the lowest index value at which the given row occurs. On a blank board, this always comes back as 0.

Another way to get around this is to set a counter for the rows (as in the example below).

As for the extra line on the character row, you can get around this by printing the row contents differently, as in the example below.

cur = [[' ',' ',' '],[' ',' ',' '],[' ',' ',' ']]

# initialize a row counter
rownumb = 0

for row in cur:
    print(cur.index(row))

    # increment the row counter
    rownumb += 1
    print('   |'*(len(cur)-1)+'   ')

    # a different approach to printing the contents of each row
    print(' ' + row[0] + ' | ' + row[1] + ' | ' + row[2])

    print('   |'*(len(cur)-1)+'   ')

    # check the counter and don't print the line after the final row
    if rownumb < 3:
        print('----'+('----'*(len(cur)-2))+'---')

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Mar 14 '21 at 18:07

Although my solution varies differently than yours. But I have a recommendation. Why not just simply print the board using string formatting, instead of using nested loops as follows:

values=[' ' for x in range(9)]
print("\n")
print("\t     |     |")
print("\t  {}  |  {}  |  {}".format(values[0], values[1], values[2]))
print('\t_____|_____|_____')

print("\t     |     |")
print("\t  {}  |  {}  |  {}".format(values[3], values[4], values[5]))
print('\t_____|_____|_____')

print("\t     |     |")

print("\t  {}  |  {}  |  {}".format(values[6], values[7], values[8]))
print("\t     |     |")
print("\n")

The output is as follows:

     |     |   
_____|_____|_____
     |     |
     |     |   
_____|_____|_____
     |     |
     |     |   
     |     |

Printing Tic Tac Toe game board?

3 Answers3