Can you change the format pad character?

[dextius]

Is it possible to modify the default pad character of the format function from space to something user defined? Side question: If you can not, what is the fastest way of padding (to a fixed length) multiple columns of data?

[merlyn]

The format directive is pretty frozen and inflexible, although it's always worthy of asking a question because there might be some arcane mechanism to influence it to get your desired behavior. In this case, no. {grin}

However, this piece of code can be dropped in to your program rather easily:

sub pad_string {
  my $string = shift;
  my $desired_length = shift;
  my $pad_character = shift || " ";
  substr($string,0,0) = $pad_character x ($desired_length - length $st
+ring);
  $string;
}

-- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker
Be sure to read my standard disclaimer if this is a reply.

[Not_a_Number]

At least when the padding is whitespace (which the OP seemed to want), is this solution better than using (s)printf? For ex:

my $string = 'foo';
my $len = 15;
$string = sprintf "%${len}s", $string;
print $string;

Please note: Don't get me wrong. For fear of fire and brimstone, the Novice that I am would not presume to criticise merlyn. It's just that I've been playing with (s)printf recently, prompting me to change a few old progs from, like:

print ' ' x ( 23 - length $foo ), $foo;

to:

printf '%23s', $foo;

Have I been I wrong or (more likely), AIMS (Am I Missing Something)?

dave

[merlyn]

You said:

At least when the padding is whitespace (which the OP seemed to want)

But OP said:

Is it possible to modify the default pad character of the format function from space to something user defined?

Yes, had the original question been about padding whitespace, I certainly would have preferred sprintf. But it was precisely not about that, hence my solution.

-- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker
Be sure to read my standard disclaimer if this is a reply.