Lisp:columnize.el defines interactive autoloaded functions to turn a list of words or quoted phrases into a neatly columnized list.
For example:
here is a list of various length words that I want columnized here is a list of various length words that I want columnized
Two functions are provided.
A practical example of using columnize strings might be something like this. I selected the quoted strings then did M-x columnize-strings <ret>
(defvar enform-keywords-statements '( "AT END" "AT START" "CLOSE" "DECLARE" "DELINK" "DICTIONARY" "EXIT" "FIND" "FOOTING" "LINK" "LIST" "OPEN" "PARAM" "SET" "SUBFOOTING" "SUBTITLE" "TITLE" ) "List of ENFORM statement keywords. Used to create the `font-lock-keywords' table.")
And got this
(defvar enform-keywords-statements '( "AT END" "AT START" "CLOSE" "DECLARE" "DELINK" "DICTIONARY" "EXIT" "FIND" "FOOTING" "LINK" "LIST" "OPEN" "PARAM" "SET" "SUBFOOTING" "SUBTITLE" "TITLE" ) "List of ENFORM statement keywords. Used to create the `font-lock-keywords' table.")
I initially wrote this for quickly fixing up text copied from CSV files when documenting projects but found it handy in other cases like beautifying lists of keywords in major modes I maintain
See also AlignColumn and AlignCommands.