Java output file formatting

Question

I am having a bit of trouble formatting an output file for myself to be easily readable. I am trying to output the file such as:

Name of School                   Size of School
--------------                   --------------
Blblah blah                        1300
Blah blah blah                    11300
Blah blah blah asdf               14220
Blah bblah                         1300

but am having trouble. Currently I am using the following code to get the following output:

File file1 = new File("src\\sortedInt.txt");
Formatter fmt = new Formatter(file1);

HelperMethods.quickSortStudents(colleges, 0, colleges.length - 1);
for(int i = 0; i < colleges.length; i++)
{
      fmt.format(colleges[i].nameOfSchool + "%20d" + "\n", (int)colleges[i].numOfStudents);
      fmt.flush();
}  

which gives me:

eastman school of music                 800
clark university                1100
walla walla college                1100
drew                1200
juilliard                1200

Because I am just padding from the end of the college name. Is there anyway to pad the whole string so all the strings are a constant length?

Thank you everyone for you help

Solution 1

Yep, output your college name left-justified and padded to a certain length, then output your number of student right-justified and padded to a certain length:

fmt.format("%-20s%10d\n", colleges[i].nameOfSchool, (int) colleges[i].numOfStudents);

Solution 2

You might want to add the name of the schools to be formatted too, as the following:

fmt.format("%1$20s %1$5d\n", colleges[i].nameOfSchool, (int)colleges[i].numOfStudents);

The following link can give you more insight in formatting: http://download.oracle.com/javase/1.5.0/docs/api/java/util/Formatter.html

Comments

[Mac]

I believe that should be "%1$20s %2$5d\n".