Nicely formatting output to console, specifying number of tabs

Question

I am generating a script that is outputting information to the console. The information is some kind of statistic with a value. So much like a hash.

So one value\'s

Answer 1

String has a built-in ljust for exactly this:

x = {"foo"=>37, "something long"=>42, "between"=>99}
x.each { |k, v| puts "#{k.ljust(20)} #{v}" }
# Outputs:
#  foo                  37
#  something long       42
#  between              99

Or, if you want tabs, you can do a little math (assuming tab display width of 8) and write a short display function:

def tab_pad(label, tab_stop = 4)
  label_tabs = label.length / 8
  label.ljust(label.length + tab_stop - label_tabs, "\t")
end

x.each { |k, v| puts "#{tab_pad(k)}#{v}" }
# Outputs: 
#  foo                  37
#  something long       42
#  between              99