Padding stl strings in C++

Question

I\'m using std::string and need to left pad them to a given width. What is the recommended way to do this in C++?

Sample input:

123
         


        

Answer 1

you can create a string containing N spaces by calling

string(N, ' ');

So you could do like this:

string to_be_padded = ...;
if (to_be_padded.size() < 10) {
  string padded(10 - to_be_padded.size(), ' ');
  padded += to_be_padded;
  return padded;
} else { return to_be_padded; }