How to widen a column of text in Polars

why you should read the docs

I recently ran into the problem of how to make a column wider in polars. I was familiar with pandas and with that, it's a simple configuration.

pd.set_option('max_colwidth', 400)

when you search for similar functionality in polars you also find this simple configuration.

pl.Config.set_tbl_rows(400)

The problem is, it doesn't work.

So you check stackoverflow and copy and paste code from there.

with pl.Config() as cfg:
    cfg.set_tbl_cols(400)
    print(df)

Doesn't work.

So you ask AI. They go on to give you a crappy, hacky workaround.

Polars doesn't have a built-in method to adjust column widths in its default console output. However, we can use a workaround by converting the Polars DataFrame to a pandas DataFrame and then use pandas' display options.
	- (Claude 3.5-sonnet, 2024)

Wrong!

So you read the docs. You check out the method. You're using it correctly.

You fork polars from github, follow the installation steps and step into the code. Everything looks fine.

So you go back to the documentation and read a bit more. There you find another method.

pl.Config.set_fmt_str_lengths(400)

This solves your problem.

If you just read the documentation, you could save yourself a lot of time wasted on a wild goose chase and crappy AI suggestions. READ THE DOCUMENTATION!