Question

What is the best way to create a fixed width file in C#. I have a bunch of fields with lengths to write out. Say 20,80.10,2 etc all left aligned. Is there an easy way to do this?

Answer 1

You can use string.Format to easily pad a value with spaces e.g.

string a = String.Format('|{0,5}|{1,5}|{2,5}', 1, 20, 300); string b = String.Format('|{0,-5}|{1,-5}|{2,-5}', 1, 20, 300);  // 'a' will be equal to '|    1|   20|  300|' // 'b' will be equal to '|1    |20   |300  |'