Number Padding to Strings

Question

Hi,
I'm wanting to take a number and left pad it with 0's into a string.
I'm currently using
NSString foo = [NSString stringWithFormat: @"%d", bar1];
to convert an int to a string. But i'm wanting to make sure this string is the same length by left padding with 0's. How do i achieve this?
eg....
24 = @"000024"
Thanks.
N

Answer 1

jaxjason wrote:
This is what Charles helped me write on the other post. turns out there is a premade NSString function for creating a string with padding. * stringByPaddingToLength:length* above.
Actually, I think there is an even better way to do it. Look up the NSNumberFormatter. Here is a slightly modified example that pads with '-' characters, for example:
NSNumberFormatter *numberFormatter = [[NSNumberFormatter alloc] init];
[numberFormatter setFormatterBehavior: NSNumberFormatterBehavior10_4];
[numberFormatter setFormatWidth: 10];
[numberFormatter setPadCharacter: @"-"];
NSNumber *four = [NSNumber numberWithFloat:4.0];
NSLog(@"%@", [numberFormatter stringFromNumber:four]);
// output: "---------4"
I haven't tried the above code so I don't know if it will work. But if there is a formal, safer Cocoa replacement for printf, this is it.
I was used to things like VB where there really isn't a "label:Variable" structure.
Objective-C is actually a pretty old language. This is a holdover from the older, more "pure" object-oriented languages. The only thing the "label" is used for is to differentiate method signatures. Without the label, if two methods have the same name and same argument types, they are considered the same method. Objective-C expands the method name to include all the labels. This allows more freedom in defining the first part of a method and and argument types.
Thanks alot for you help on this. I am really excited i figured this out. Although my wife may not like it so much, I now have even more reason to work on this stuff.
Consider getting a laptop. Then you can sit next to her and code away. It helps.