Question

In C#, I have a width I want to use for some strings, but I won’t know that width until runtime. I’m doing something like this:

string.Format("{0, " + digits + "}", value)  // prints 123 as "  123"

Is there a string formatting directive that lets me specify this without smashing my own format string together like this?

I looked around on MSDN for a little while and I feel like I’m missing a whole chapter on format strings or something.

Answer 1

Take a look at PadLeft:

s = "123".PadLeft(5);  // Defaults to spaces
s = "123".PadLeft(5, '.');  // Pads with dots