Print Java arrays in columns

Question

I\'m trying to format two arrays in Java to print something like this:

Inventory Number      Books                          Prices
--------------------------         


        

Answer 1

You can use

System.out.printf(...)

for formatting the output. That uses

String.format(...)

which uses

java.util.Formatter

you can find the documentation here.

To align a simple String, you can use the following:

String formatted = String.format("%20s", str)

this will prepend

20 - str.length

blanks before the actual String and will return the padded String. For example, if your String is "Hello, World!" it will prepend 11 blanks:

"           Hello, World!"

to align something to the right left, you have to prepend a "-" before the number that indicates the length of the result string.

To safely align everything, you first have to find out what is your longest string.