C - Insert a variable number of spaces into a string Formatting an output file

Question

Alrighty  I m taking data from a list that I populate a DataGridView with and am exporting it to a text file  I ve already done the function to export it to a CSV  and would like to do a plain text version as well   Because the Titles and other elements are variable in length  when the file is saved and then opened in Notepad it looks like a mess because nothing lines up   I d like to have the output look like this   Sample Title One   Element One   Whatever Else Sample Title 2     Element 2     Whatever Else S  T  3            E3            Whatever Else   I figure that I can loop through each of the elements in order to get the length of the longest one so I can calculate how many spaces to add to each of the remaining element   My main question is  Is there an elegant way to add a variable number of chars into a string  It d be nice to have something like  myString insert index  charToInsert  howManyToInsert     Of course  I can obviously just write a function to do this via a loop  but I wanted to see if there was a better way of doing it   Thanks in advance   -Sootah

User · Answer

Just for kicks  here s the functions I wrote to do it before I had the  PadRight bit       public string insertSpacesAtEnd string input  int longest                string output   input          string spaces               int inputLength   input Length          int numToInsert   longest - inputLength           for  int i   0  i  lt  numToInsert  i                          spaces                            output    spaces           return output             public int findLongest List lt Results gt  theList                int longest   0           for  int i   0  i  lt  theList Count  i                          if  longest  lt  theList i  title Length                  longest   theList i  title Length                    return longest                 Usage         for  int i   0  i  lt  storageList Count  i                  output    insertSpacesAtEnd storageList i  title  longest   5      storageList i  rank Trim               storageList i  term Trim                   storageList i  name     r n

User · Answer

Use String Format   or TextWriter Format    depending on how you actually write to the file  and specify the width of a field   String Format   0 20  1 15  2 15     Sample Title One    Element One    Whatever Else      You can specify the width of a field within interpolated strings as well       Sample Title One  20   Element One  15   Whatever Else  15     And just so you know  you can create a string of repeated characters using the appropriate string contructor   new String      20      string of 20 spaces

User · Answer

Use String Format   string title1    Sample Title One   string element1    Element One   string format     0 -20   1 -10     string result   string Format format  title1  element1     or you can print to Console directly with   Console WriteLine format  title1  element1     In the format  0 -20  means the first argument has a fixed length 20  and the negative sign guarantees the string is printed from left to right

User · Answer

I agree with Justin  and the WhiteSpace CHAR can be referenced using ASCII codes here Character number 32 represents a white space  Therefore   string Empty PadRight totalLength   char 32     An alternative approach  Create all spaces manually within a custom method and call it   private static string GetSpaces int totalLength                string result   string Empty          for  int i   0  i  lt  totalLength  i                          result                           return result          And call it in your code to create white spaces   GetSpaces 14

User · Answer

For this you probably want myString PadRight totalLength  charToInsert    See String PadRight Method  Int32  for more info

[c#] C# - Insert a variable number of spaces into a string? (Formatting an output file)

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