How can I align text in columns using Console.WriteLine?

Question

I have a sort of column display, but the end two column\'s seem to not be aligning correctly. This is the code I have at the moment:

Console.WriteLine(\"Cust         


        

Answer 1

I know, very old thread but the proposed solution was not fully automatic when there are longer strings around.

I therefore created a small helper method which does it fully automatic. Just pass in a list of string array where each array represents a line and each element in the array, well an element of the line.

The method can be used like this:

var lines = new List();
lines.Add(new[] { "What", "Before", "After"});
lines.Add(new[] { "Name:", name1, name2});
lines.Add(new[] { "City:", city1, city2});
lines.Add(new[] { "Zip:", zip1, zip2});
lines.Add(new[] { "Street:", street1, street2});
var output = ConsoleUtility.PadElementsInLines(lines, 3);

The helper method is as follows:

public static class ConsoleUtility
{
    /// 

    /// Converts a List of string arrays to a string where each element in each line is correctly padded.
    /// Make sure that each array contains the same amount of elements!
    /// - Example without:
    /// Title Name Street
    /// Mr. Roman Sesamstreet
    /// Mrs. Claudia Abbey Road
    /// - Example with:
    /// Title   Name      Street
    /// Mr.     Roman     Sesamstreet
    /// Mrs.    Claudia   Abbey Road
    /// List lines, where each line is an array of elements for that line.
    /// Additional padding between each element (default = 1)
    /// 
    public static string PadElementsInLines(List lines, int padding = 1)
    {
        // Calculate maximum numbers for each element accross all lines
        var numElements = lines[0].Length;
        var maxValues = new int[numElements];
        for (int i = 0; i < numElements; i++)
        {
            maxValues[i] = lines.Max(x => x[i].Length) + padding;
        }
        var sb = new StringBuilder();
        // Build the output
        bool isFirst = true;
        foreach (var line in lines)
        {
            if (!isFirst)
            {
                sb.AppendLine();
            }
            isFirst = false;
            for (int i = 0; i < line.Length; i++)
            {
                var value = line[i];
                // Append the value with padding of the maximum length of any value for this element
                sb.Append(value.PadRight(maxValues[i]));
            }
        }
        return sb.ToString();
    }
}

Hope this helps someone. The source is from a post in my blog here: http://dev.flauschig.ch/wordpress/?p=387