i needed a tool to identify non-wrapping columns from text commands with variable fixed witdth output. (e.g. lsblk)

fwheader.py

#!/usr/bin/python
# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-

__author__     = 'Joshua M. Schmidlkofer <joshland@protonmail.com>'
__credits__    = ["Joshua M. Schmidlkofer"]
__status__     = "Development"
__url__        = "https://gist.github.com/joshland/e89347f88d128a971768c2a711dfa5dc"

from collections import OrderedDict
import re

def findfields(header):
    """ 
    guess at variable fixed-width columns, based upon header.
    orientation is either 'left' or 'right'
    """
    fields = OrderedDict()

    colName  = None
    colStart = -1
    colEnd   = -1
    index = 0
    while 1:
        s = re.search(r'\w+', header[index:])
        if s: # we found something
            start, end = s.span()      ## relative start/stop
            sub = header[index:]         ## relative stringlet
            if colName:                ## if we have an old col, save it now
                colEnd = index + start
                fields[colName] = (colStart, colEnd)
                pass
            
            colName = sub[start:end]   ## new column name
            colStart = index + start    ## set new start
            colEnd   = -1               ## reset the end
            if end + index == len(header):
                ## We reached the end
                fields[colName] = (colStart, -1)
                break
            index = index + end
            
        else:
            print("hmm Somethign went wrong")
            break
        continue
    return fields