How to pad a string to a fixed length with spaces in Python

Question

I m sure this is covered in plenty of places  but I don t know the exact name of the action I m trying to do so I can t really look it up   I ve been reading an official Python book for 30 minutes trying to find out how to do this    Problem  I need to put a string in a certain length  field     For example  if the name field was 15 characters long  and my name was John  I would get  John  followed by 11 spaces to create the 15 character field     I need this to work for any string put in for the variable  name      I know it will likely be some form of formatting  but I can t find the exact way to do this  Help would be appreciated

User · Accepted Answer

This is super simple with format    gt  gt  gt  a    John   gt  gt  gt      lt 15   format a   John

User · Answer

string      name   raw input    The value at the field length   input    the length of the field string    name string         length-len name     Add extra spaces   This will add the number of spaces needed  provided the field has length    the length of the name provided

User · Answer

First check to see if the string s length needs to be shortened  then add spaces until it is as long as the field length    fieldLength   15 string1   string1 0 15    If it needs to be shortened  shorten it while len string1   lt  fieldLength      rand

User · Answer

If you have python version 3 6 or higher you can use f strings  gt  gt  gt  string    quot John quot   gt  gt  gt  f quot  string  lt 15  quot   John              Or if you d like it to the left  gt  gt  gt  f quot  string  gt 15  quot             John   Centered  gt  gt  gt  f quot  string  15  quot        John         For more variations  feel free to check out the docs  https   docs python org 3 library string html format-string-syntax

User · Answer

Just whipped this up for my problem  it just adds a space until the length of string is more than the min length you give it   def format string str  min length       while len str   lt  min length          str            return str

User · Answer

You can use rjust and ljust functions to add specific characters before or after a string to reach a specific length  numStr    69   numStr   numStr rjust 5        The result is 69      And for the left  numStr    69   numStr   numStr ljust 3        The result will be    69 Also to add zeros you can simply use  numstr zfill 8   Which gives you 69000000 as the result

User · Answer

You can use the ljust method on strings    gt  gt  gt  name    John   gt  gt  gt  name ljust 15   John               Note that if the name is longer than 15 characters  ljust won t truncate it  If you want to end up with exactly 15 characters  you can slice the resulting string    gt  gt  gt  name ljust 15   15

User · Answer

I know this is a bit of an old question  but I ve ended up making my own little class for it  Might be useful to someone so I ll stick it up  I used a class variable  which is inherently persistent  to ensure sufficient whitespace was added to clear any old lines  See below  class consolePrinter        Class to write to the console  Objective is to make it easy to write to console  with user able to  overwrite previous line  or not        -------------------------------------------------------------------------      Class variables stringLen   0       -------------------------------------------------------------------------            ------------------------------------------------------------------------- def writeline stringIn  overwriteFlag False       import sys      Get length of stringIn and update stringLen if needed     if len stringIn   gt  consolePrinter stringLen          consolePrinter stringLen   len stringIn  1          ctrlString    quot    lt  quot  str consolePrinter stringLen   quot   quot      if overwriteFlag          sys stdout write  quot  r quot    ctrlString format stringIn       else          sys stdout write  quot  n quot    stringIn      sys stdout flush            return  Which then is called via  consolePrinter writeline  quot text here quot   True    If you want to overwrite the previous line  or consolePrinter writeline  quot text here quot  False   if you don t  Note  for it to work right  all messages pushed to the console would need to be through consolePrinter writeline

User · Answer

name    John     your variable result    name                     15    this adds 15 spaces to the  name                                           but cuts it at 15 characters

[python] How to pad a string to a fixed length with spaces in Python?

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