A very simple python function that will split apart a textual table into rows and columns (use six to replace range and zip if you need good performance in python 2). Public Domain (CC0)

splittable.py

# To the extent possible under law, Taylor C. Richberger has waived all copyright and related or neighboring rights to splittable. This work is published from: United States.

def splittable(table):
    '''An incredibly simple routine to split a textual table based on "gutters"
    in it.  Only works on a line-by-line basis, so any tables with multi-line
    rows will not work.  It also needs a solid verticle whitespace gutter
    between lines.  Does not work with tabs.  If you have a table with tabs, it
    will need to be preexpanded before being passed in.  Does not strip, so if
    you need cells to be stripped, it will have to be done after this
    function.  The columns can only span to the shortest line, so empty columns
    on the right side of the table will need to be filled with spaces to work properly.'''

    lines = table.strip('\n').splitlines()
    shortestline = min(len(line) for line in lines)

    gutters = set()

    for i in range(shortestline):
        # The character is a separator
        if all(line[i].isspace() for line in lines):
            gutters.add(i)
    
    deletegutters = set()

    # If multicharacter gutters exist, we only want the rightmost
    for gutter in gutters:
        if gutter + 1 in gutters:
            deletegutters.add(gutter)

    gutters -= deletegutters

    gutters = sorted(list(gutters))

    output = [[line[i + 1:j] for i, j in
        zip([-1] + gutters, gutters + [None])] for line in lines]
    return output