Question

In .NET, I can use string.PadLeft() and string.PadRight() to pad a string with spaces on the left/right.

var myString = "test";
Console.WriteLine(myString.PadLeft(10)); //prints "      test"
Console.WriteLine(myString.PadLeft(2)); //prints "test"
Console.WriteLine(myString.PadLeft(10, '.')); //prints "......test"    
Console.WriteLine(myString.PadRight(10, '.')); //prints "test......"

What is the equivalent in R?

Answer 1

You can pass the length in as a parameter:

PadLeft <- function(s, x) {
  require(stringr)
  sprintf("%*s", x+str_length(s), s)
}

PadRight <- function(s, x) {
  require(stringr)
  sprintf("%*s", -str_length(s)-x, s)
}

PadLeft("hello", 3)
## [1] "   hello"
PadRight("hello", 3)
## [1] "hello   "