[BUG] Ellipsize last column in a table

[elboulangero]

• I've checked docs and closed issues for possible solutions.
• I can't find my issue in the FAQ.

Hello,

I'm trying to create a table where the last column ellipsizes.

First try

#!/usr/bin/python3

from rich.console import Console
from rich.table import Table

console = Console()
table = Table()
table.add_column("Name")
table.add_column("Age")
table.add_column("Country")
table.add_column("Biography", overflow='ellipsis')
table.add_row("Louis", "14", "France", "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. " * 2)
console.print(table)

$ COLUMNS=80 ./rich-test.py 
┏━━━━━━━┳━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ Name  ┃ Age ┃ Country ┃ Biography                                            ┃
┡━━━━━━━╇━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┩
│ Louis │ 14  │ France  │ The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. The     │
│       │     │         │ quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.             │
└───────┴─────┴─────────┴──────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

The last column doesn't ellipsize, instead it wraps. Let's try again with no_wrap=True.

Second try

#!/usr/bin/python3

from rich.console import Console
from rich.table import Table

console = Console()
table = Table()
table.add_column("Name")
table.add_column("Age")
table.add_column("Country")
table.add_column("Biography", no_wrap=True, overflow='ellipsis')
table.add_row("Louis", "14", "France", "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. " * 2)
console.print(table)

$ COLUMNS=80 ./rich-test.py 
┏┳┳┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃┃┃┃ Biography                                                                 ┃
┡╇╇╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┩
││││ The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumps o… │
└┴┴┴───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

The last column does ellipsize, however all the other columns are useless. Is it a bug in the way rich allocates the width?

Expected output

What I'm trying to achieve is that:

┏━━━━━━━┳━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ Name  ┃ Age ┃ Country ┃ Biography                                            ┃
┡━━━━━━━╇━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┩
│ Louis │ 14  │ France  │ The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. The…    │
└───────┴─────┴─────────┴──────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Ie. the last column should display as much as it can of the text, and ellipsize the rest. Other columns shouldn't be affected and should have enough width to display their content.

Am I doing it wrong, or is there a bug with column width allocation?

Platform

I'm running Linux Debian unstable.

$ python3 --version
Python 3.13.12

$ dpkg -l | grep -E '(python3-rich)'
ii  python3-rich     15.0.0-1 

Details

If you're using Rich in a terminal:

$ python3 -m rich.diagnose
╭───────────────────────── <class 'rich.console.Console'> ─────────────────────────╮
│ A high level console interface.                                                  │
│                                                                                  │
│ ╭──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╮ │
│ │ <console width=211 ColorSystem.TRUECOLOR>                                    │ │
│ ╰──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╯ │
│                                                                                  │
│     color_system = 'truecolor'                                                   │
│         encoding = 'utf-8'                                                       │
│             file = <_io.TextIOWrapper name='<stdout>' mode='w' encoding='utf-8'> │
│           height = 52                                                            │
│    is_alt_screen = False                                                         │
│ is_dumb_terminal = False                                                         │
│   is_interactive = True                                                          │
│       is_jupyter = False                                                         │
│      is_terminal = True                                                          │
│   legacy_windows = False                                                         │
│         no_color = False                                                         │
│          options = ConsoleOptions(                                               │
│                        size=ConsoleDimensions(width=211, height=52),             │
│                        legacy_windows=False,                                     │
│                        min_width=1,                                              │
│                        max_width=211,                                            │
│                        is_terminal=True,                                         │
│                        encoding='utf-8',                                         │
│                        max_height=52,                                            │
│                        justify=None,                                             │
│                        overflow=None,                                            │
│                        no_wrap=False,                                            │
│                        highlight=None,                                           │
│                        markup=None,                                              │
│                        height=None                                               │
│                    )                                                             │
│            quiet = False                                                         │
│           record = False                                                         │
│         safe_box = True                                                          │
│             size = ConsoleDimensions(width=211, height=52)                       │
│        soft_wrap = False                                                         │
│           stderr = False                                                         │
│            style = None                                                          │
│         tab_size = 8                                                             │
│            width = 211                                                           │
╰──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╯
╭─── <class 'rich._windows.WindowsConsoleFeatures'> ────╮
│ Windows features available.                           │
│                                                       │
│ ╭───────────────────────────────────────────────────╮ │
│ │ WindowsConsoleFeatures(vt=False, truecolor=False) │ │
│ ╰───────────────────────────────────────────────────╯ │
│                                                       │
│ truecolor = False                                     │
│        vt = False                                     │
╰───────────────────────────────────────────────────────╯
╭────── Environment Variables ───────╮
│ {                                  │
│     'CLICOLOR': None,              │
│     'COLORTERM': 'truecolor',      │
│     'COLUMNS': None,               │
│     'JPY_PARENT_PID': None,        │
│     'JUPYTER_COLUMNS': None,       │
│     'JUPYTER_LINES': None,         │
│     'LINES': None,                 │
│     'NO_COLOR': None,              │
│     'TERM_PROGRAM': None,          │
│     'TERM': 'xterm-256color',      │
│     'TTY_COMPATIBLE': None,        │
│     'TTY_INTERACTIVE': None,       │
│     'VSCODE_VERBOSE_LOGGING': None │
│ }                                  │
╰────────────────────────────────────╯
platform="Linux"

pip freeze | grep rich
I am not using pip to install anything on my system, only debian packages.

Thanks

[willmcgugan]

overflow="ellipsis" defines what will happen when the text overflows (i.e. doesn't fit). If it can wrap onto the following line, it likely won't overflow (unless you have a very large word).

If you disable wrapping, it increases the chances it will overflow. But then the table will try to fit the entire line in, and you've created constraints that are impossible to satisfy.

If you want this behavior, you could extend the Text class. Something like this.

#!/usr/bin/python3

from rich.console import Console
from rich.table import Table
from rich.text import Text

class SingleLineText(Text):
    def __rich_measure__(self, console, options):
        return super().__rich_measure__(console, options).with_minimum(options.max_width)

console = Console()
table = Table()
table.add_column("Name")
table.add_column("Age")
table.add_column("Country")
table.add_column("Biography",)
table.add_row("Louis", "14", "France", SingleLineText("The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. " * 2, no_wrap=True, overflow="ellipsis"))
console.print(table)

[elboulangero]

I wouldn't have guessed that by myself :) I tried and I must say it works great. Thank you very much!