Write a string padding function. Java doesn't have one, so you'd have
to write your own. Search on this group for "string padding"
I found this:
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.java.programmer/browse_frm/thread/66820
0f921a2c882/2d61ff32f3278915?lnk=gst&q=string+padding#2d61ff32f3278915

System.out.printf("%12s","some string");

System.out.printf("%12s", s);

Arne

Catherina Svensson schrieb:

have you tried:

String.format("%12s","aaa");

Christian

The idea of Console output is to be simple.  To format text you need
something much more than just UTF bytes for example HTML.  Simply you
can't and nor does it make sense to do so.  It is up to what is
displaying the characters to interpret what to display.

Hi,

System.out.format("%12s\n", "aaa");

Regards,

John Peters

What if the field is bigger than 12 chars?

Anyway Jakarta commons contains a lot of very useful stuff, including
a lot of StringUtils
very convenient methods, including leftpad, etc.

If you want don't want to use Jakarta commons for this, you may write
a helper method
somewhere in your project.

The following may help (not tested):

   private static final String PAD = "            ";

   final String s ="aa aaa aa";
   System.out.println( PAD.substring( Math.min(PAD.length(),
s.length())) + s);

see http://mindprod.com/jgloss/printf.html

package confusing;

public class Main
{
   public static void main(String[] args)
   {
       String blank = "            ";
       String sample = "bb bb bb";

       System.out.println(blank.substring(0,
              blank.length() - sample.length()) + sample);
   }
}