Print and update a matrix in-place

Question

I have a matrix represented as a list of lists (but can easily change this representation if it would help). I will be updating this matrix as the program runs. I would like to have the matrix displayed on the screen in some standard way. So something like

I would like this display to update as the program runs.

For example,

def updatematrix():
#Change some entries in the matrix

A = [[3,2,3],[1,2,1],[2,8,6]]
while(True):
    updatematrix()
    display(A) #This would ideally change the display in place.

What is a good way of doing this? (In fact I will be changing entire columns and rows and will eventually want to make the changed row/column be in a different color.)

I am happy to use any free libraries that might be useful.

Answer 1

I'd suggeest using the curses library, which is part of the standard python libraries http://docs.python.org/2/library/curses.html

I've included a bit of a hacked together example

import curses
import time

mywindow = curses.initscr()

matrix = [[3,2,3],[1,2,1],[2,8,6]]

def updateMatrix(m):
    m[1][1] = m[1][1] * 2
    return m

def getMarixString(m):
    x = ''
    for row in m:
        x += ' '.join(str(item) for item in row)
        x += "\n"
    return x

z = 10
while z > 1:
    matrix = updateMatrix(matrix)
    mywindow.addstr(0,0, getMarixString(matrix))
    mywindow.refresh()
    z -= 1
    time.sleep(3)

curses.endwin()
quit()