Need help with formatting a number

Question

hi all,
the problem i am having has been a hot topic over time in java. i have an integer say 123. i want to convert this to a string of 10 characters. how do i pad the first seven spaces with blanks. ex. " 123" in c++ you can use sprintf. how do i do this in java. i have seen mention of NumberFormat but being new to java cannot figure this class out. any helpful code would be much appreciated.
thanks

Answer 1

That would certainly works but it is not the most efficent method to achive the goal since it discards String objects left right and center (especially if you want more than 10 padding spaces)
public String pad(Integer i) {
String value = i.toString();
StringBuffer buff = new StringBuffer();
for( int i = 0, n = ( 10 - value.length ); i < n; i++ ) {
buff.append( " " );
return buff.toString() + value;
}