Displaying the items of multiple lists (number may vary) in columns next to each other

Question

I have different lists, and for each list, I'd like to display its items in a column. I want one list per column.

Basically, I can already achieve that result by manually changing the column variable col1, col2, etc. but the problem is that the number of lists may vary.

catalogs_list = ["TRANSFORMS", "DEFORMS", "CONFORMS", "HELPERS", "MASKS"]
list1 = ["transforms 1", "transforms 2", "transforms 3", "transforms 4"]
list2 = ["deforms 1", "deforms 2", "deforms 3"]
list3 = ["conforms 1", "conforms 2"]
list4 = ["helpers 1", "helpers 2", "helpers 3"]
list5 = ["masks 1", "masks 2"]
master_list = [list1, list2, list3, list4, list5]

top_row = layout.row(align=False)
for item in catalogs_list:
    top_row.label(text=item)

split = layout.split()
col1 = split.column()
for item in master_list[0]:
    col1.label(text=item)
col2 = split.column()
for item in master_list[1]:
    col2.label(text=item)
col3 = split.column()
for item in master_list[2]:
    col3.label(text=item)
col4 = split.column()
for item in master_list[3]:
    col4.label(text=item)
col5 = split.column()
for item in master_list[4]:
    col5.label(text=item)

The code above gets me this, which is exactly what I want:

But I want to achieve the same thing as the image above but in a 'for loop' because I need as many columns as my number of lists (which is unknown in advance):

number_of_columns = len(catalogs_list)

split = layout.split()
col = split.column()
for i in range(number_of_columns):
    for item in master_list[i]:
        col.label(text=item)

This is what I get with the code above, and I lose the columns. And I can't increment the variable name col (like when I knew the number of columns in advance):

So how can I achieve this?

Thanks.

Answer 1

just put the split.column in the for loop like this:

 for i in range(number_of_columns):
            col = split.column()
            for item in master_list[i]:
                col.label(text=item)