asciitool.py

#!/bin/env python3
import sys, string

def str_findp(start, s, pred):
    for i in range(start,len(s)):
        if pred(s[i]):
            return i
    return None

#takes a list of lines as template for the ascii art; and a list of tokens (for example, words) to replace it with
#for example, you could use C tokenizer to create a list of tokens to pass to this function to format it in an interesting way
def perform(template_lines, tokens):
        idx = 0
        tkidx = -1
        for line in template_lines:
            i = 0
            while True:
                tkidx += 1
                if tkidx >= len(tokens):
                    return 
                tok = tokens[tkidx]
                j = str_findp(i, line, lambda c: not (c in string.whitespace))
                if j == None:
                    tkidx -= 1
                    break
                print(" " * (j - i + 1), end='')
                print(tok, end='')
                i = j + len(tok) + 1

            print()

#usage: ./asciitool.py ascii_art_template.txt replacement_text.txt
if __name__ == '__main__':
    with open(sys.argv[1]) as art:
        with open(sys.argv[2]) as txt:
            perform(art.readlines(), ''.join(txt.readlines()).split())