Opening TXT output file in notepad alignment is distorted

Question

Hi,
I have written a problem that reads data from the database and writes it to a TXT file. While opening this in tools like Ultraedit or Textpad, the alignment is perfect.
When the output is open in notepad, the alignment is distorted.
Any idea why this might be so ?
Thanks,
Sajiv

Answer 1

No, I am using spaces.
I retrieve the data from the table, each row is fixed in length. Every line is of course separated with \n. Here is a snapshot of the program. See the method fillspaces below.
public int writeAll(java.sql.ResultSet rs, boolean includeColumnNames)
throws SQLException, IOException {
ResultSetMetaData metadata = rs.getMetaData();
if (includeColumnNames) {
     writeColumnNames(metadata);
int columnCount = metadata.getColumnCount();
while (rs.next())
     rowCount++;
     String[] nextLine = new String[columnCount];
     for (int i = 0; i < columnCount; i++) {
          nextLine[i] = getColumnValue(rs, metadata.getColumnType(i + 1), i + 1);
          switch(i){
          case 0:
               nextLine=fillSpaces(nextLine[i],40);//external_id
               break;
          case 1:
               nextLine[i]=fillSpaces(nextLine[i],150);//name
               break;
public String fillSpaces(String value, int len)
     StringBuffer sb=new StringBuffer(value);
sb.setLength(len);
String str1=sb.toString().replace('\u0000', ' ');
return str1;