Question

As the title says, is there an easy way to output two columns to the console in Java?

I’m aware of \t, but I haven’t found a way to space based on a specific column when using printf.

Answer 1

Use the width and precision specifiers, set to the same value. This will pad strings that are too short, and truncate strings that are too long. The ‘-‘ flag will left-justify the values in the columns.

System.out.printf('%-30.30s  %-30.30s%n', v1, v2);