title: Extracting columnar data correctly as it is in the file
body: <p>Suppose i have tabular column as below.Now i want to extract the column wise data.I tried extracting data by creating a list.But it is extracting the first row correctly but from second row onwards there is space i.e under CEN/4.Now my code considers zeroth column has 5.0001e-1 form second row,it starts reading from there. How to extract the data correctly coulmn wise.output is  scrambled.</p>
  
  <pre><code>0    1   25    CEN/4  -5.000000E-01  -3.607026E+04 -5.747796E+03 -8.912796E+02   -88.3178  
                         5.000000E-01   3.607026E+04  5.747796E+03  8.912796E+02     1.6822   
  
           27           -5.000000E-01  -3.641444E+04 -5.783247E+03 -8.912796E+02   -88.3347  
                         5.000000E-01   3.641444E+04  5.783247E+03  8.912796E+02     1.6653
  
           28           -5.000000E-01  -3.641444E+04 -5.712346E+03 -8.912796E+02   -88.3386  
                         5.000000E-01   3.641444E+04  5.712346E+03  8.912796E+02  
  
  
  my code is :
  f1=open('newdata1.txt','w')
  L = []
  for index, line in enumerate(open('Trial_1.txt','r')):
  #print index
     if index &lt; 0: #skip first 5 lines
        continue
     else:
        line =line.split()
        L.append('%s\t%s\t %s\n' %(line[0], line[1],line[2]))
  
  
  f1.writelines(L)
  
  f1.close()
  
  
  
  my output looks like this:
      0   1   CEN/4   -5.000000E-01    -5.120107E+04
     5.000000E-01 5.120107E+04    1.028093E+04    5.979930E+03     8.1461
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>i want columnar data as it is in the file.How to do that.I am a bgeinner</p>