Trailing tab in the string not getting printed using the print function in python (python3)

Question

I am trying to print a string with \t at both beginning and end, like below.

name2print="\tabhinav\t"
lastname="gupta"
print(name2print,lastname)

Expected output should be 
        abhinav         gupta

But the actual output is
        abhinav  gupta

I tried with lstrip like this and as expected strips only the beginning "\t" and prints the trailing "\t"

print(name2print.lstrip(),lastname)

Output: 
abhinav         gupta

If lstrip() can print the trailing "\t" then why is the print statement ignoring the trailing tab character in the first string while printing? I think I am missing something basic. Please help.

Answer 1

The output is correct. adds a variable number of spaces so that the next printed character is at a position which is a multiple of 8.

In your example the first adds 8 spaces, then you print abhinav (7 characters), the next tab adds 1 space to make it a multiple of 8, then the , in your print statements adds 1 space, then you print gupta:

        abhinav  gupta
123456781234567812345678

If you always want to print 8 spaces, use " ".

Answer 2

When you print a tab character, Python uses it to align the string to the end of a 4 character boundary so that the next thing that gets printed is aligned to the next boundary. So you will not always get 4 spaces. Rather, you'll get between 1 and 4 spaces. Here's some code to demonstrate this:

print('	a	','bbbb')
print('	aa	','bbbb')
print('	aaa	','bbbb')
print('	aaaa	','bbbb')
print('	aaaaa	','bbbb')
print('1234567890123456')

Result:

    a    bbbb
    aa   bbbb
    aaa  bbbb
    aaaa     bbbb
    aaaaa    bbbb
1234567890123456