Question

It’s been a long time since I’ve written a program in VB.NET, but now I’m trying to write a WinForm application. I have several strings and I want to put them together so that they can added to a ListView control.

I have this:

text1 = ("00 | 34123 | 232")
text2 = ("023 | 233 | 23332 ")
text2 = ("00 | 2342432 | 122 ")

But I want this:

text1 = ("00     |     34123       |  232   ")
text2 = ("023    |     233         |  23332 ")
text2 = ("00     |     2342432     |  122   ")

Note that each number is a string variable, so that each number can be: “12” or “123” or “1234”… How I can do that!?

Answer 1

Public Function ToFixedColumns(ByVal input As String) As String
    'Separate individual items 
    Dim values = input.Split("|"c).Select(Function(s) s.Trim()).ToArray()

    'Validate split operation
    If values.Length <> 3 Then 
        Throw New InvalidArgumentException("The string was not in the correct starting format.")
    End If

    'Create new formatted string
    Return String.Format("{0,-6} |     {1,-12}  |  {2,-6}", _
           values(0),values(1),values(2))
End Function