Haskell Pretty Printing - Accessible, practical library

Question

Assume I have [("bird",3,44),("cat",534,3)] :: [(String,Int,Int)]. What is the simplest way to get a pretty printed result, a la:

bird    3   44
cat   534    3

It seems there are a lot of Haskell pretty printing libraries without a clear favorite, nor many examples.

Answer 1

Most pretty-printing libraries focus around alternative layouts (choosing cleverly when to add newlines, etc.). For something like this, use boxes:

import Text.PrettyPrint.Boxes
import Data.List
table = [("bird",3,44),("cat",534,3)] :: [(String,Int,Int)]
cols = transpose [ [ animal, show n, show m ] | (animal, n, m) <- table ]
rendered = render . hsep 2 left . map (vcat left . map text) $ cols
putStr rendered

Output:

bird  3    44
cat   534  3