How do I align a number like this in C?

Question

I need to align a series of numbers in C with printf() like this example:

-------1
-------5
------50
-----100
----1000

Of

Answer 1

As far as I can tell from the question, the amount of padding you want will vary according to the data you have. Accordingly, the only solution to this is to scan the data before printing, to figure out the widest datum, and so find a width value you can pass to printf using the asterix operator, e.g.

loop over data - get correct padding, put into width

printf( "%*d\n", width, datum );