Format a number, pad with spaces

Question

I want a simple way to format a number into a String, but have it padded with spaces. My code started like this:
DecimalFormat myFormatter = new DecimalFormat("###.00");
String output = myFormatter.format(12.5);
The output is '12.50' when I want ' 12.50' (leading space). There's got to be an easy way to do this!
Thanks for your help

Answer 1

What you probably wanted to do was print some numbers in a column (of JTextArea's, for example) so that the decimal points line up.
I wasted some more time and came up with the following:  String formattedNumber = numberPad(number, "###.00E0");
  static String numberPad(double number, String format) {
    int desiredDecimalPosition = format.indexOf('.');
    DecimalFormat numFormat = new DecimalFormat(format);
    String formattedNum = numFormat.format(Math.abs(number));
    formattedNum = formattedNum.replace('E', 'e');
    int exponentPosition = formattedNum.indexOf('e');
    if (exponentPosition < 0)
      exponentPosition = formattedNum.length();
    formattedNum = formattedNum.replaceFirst("e0", "");
    int decimalPosition = formattedNum.indexOf('.');
    formattedNum = (number > 0 ? " " : "-") + formattedNum;;
    if (decimalPosition < 0)
      decimalPosition = exponentPosition;
    int padding = desiredDecimalPosition - decimalPosition;
    if (padding > 0)
      formattedNum = "        ".substring(8 - padding) + formattedNum;
    return formattedNum;
  }Now it turns out that- despite the fact that I've told DecimalFormat to format precisely 2 digits to the right of the decimal, it sometimes randomly gives me 3, and (less often) 1!
All this trouble just to try save 16kB of Henrik Bengtsson's sprintf in my jar file...