Home/ Questions/Q 6943719
In Process

The Archive Base Latest Questions

Editorial Team
  • 0
Asked: 2026-05-27T13:11:34+00:00

I am using Formatter to output Java code to a file. I want to

  • 0

I am using Formatter to output Java code to a file. I want to add a specific number of spaces to the start of each line. My problem is I cannot find a way to do this “neatly”. The standard options seem to only allow adding a minimum number of spaces but not a specific number of spaces.

As a work around, I am currently doing the following:
out.format("%7s%s", "", "My text"); but I’d like to do it with only two arguments like this out.format("%7s", "My text");.

Does anyone know if there is a way to do this using the standard Formatter options?

Share

Leave an answer

You must login to add an answer.

Need An Account,

1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    I’m not exactly sure what you want here:

    out.format("xxx%10sxxx", "My text");
// prints: xxx   My textxxx

    While:

    out.format("xxx%-10sxxx", "My text");
// prints: xxxMy text   xxx

    As far as I know, there is no way to do the old C-style formatting to specify the size in an argument like “%*s” because then you could pass in (str.length() + 7).

    I’m afraid that your way seems to the the most “neat”. If you can explain why you don’t like it maybe we can find a better workaround.

    • 0