A question about output result

Question

i want to print the query result of a database table into the screen. but i found it difficult to align the results. listed below is an example
Mary F 28
Alexandra M 30
i usd the listed command to print above results:
System.out.println("\t" + name + "\t" + gender + "\t" + age);
i had planed to use '\t' to align the output, but i found length of data are different. like "Mary", it is less 8 characters, while "Alexandra" requires 9 characters. this leads to the output is not aligned. the expected result would be like this:
Mary F 28
Alexandra M 30
anyone knows how can i align the output ? thanks a lot!

Answer 1

by writing something like
public static String leftAlign( String string, int length)
StringBuffer buffer = new StringBuffer( length);
if( string.length() < length)
   buffer.append(string);
   for ( int idx = string.length(); idx < length; ++idx)
     buffer.append( ' ');
else
   buffer.append( string.substring(0,length);
return buffer.toString();
System.out.println( leftAlign( "", 9) + leftAlign( name, 30) + leftAlign( gender, 5) + leftAlign( age, 5) );