Ruby-like Question: Make this function shorter (ActionScript 3)

Question

I just wrote this incredibly verbose code to turn numbers like 2 into 02. Can you make this function shorter, please (maintaning the functionality)?

Answer 1

I don't think there is a built-in way, but this might be cleaner (if not necessarily better performing):

//20 zeroes, could be more if needed
public static var Zeroes:String = "00000000000000000000"   

public static function format(n:Number, minimumLength:int):String {
var retVal:String = (n.toFixed(0)); // cut off the decimals
var stillNeed:int = minimumLength - retVal.length;
retVal = Zeroes.substring(0, stillNeed) + retVal; 
return retVal;
}

The "zeroes" var eliminates the need for looping, just prepend however many zeroes you need from a prebuilt string.