returnString method

[Gaz Johnson]

I want to create a method which returns a formatted String.

For example :

"Field One : "<space><content>
"Field Two : "<space><content>




So all the fields are aligned as if layed out in table format. Whats the best way of inserting the correct space in between the field name and the content?

Thanks in advance

[Campbell Ritchie]

How about the static format method of the String class?

[Gaz Johnson]

Thankyou for the reply. Maybe i'm being a complete idiot here (quite a high chance in fact) but I had a look at the API earlier and again now and i'm not sure of the method your referring to?

[Dawn Charangat]

There is another formatter available in the java.text package

java.text.MessageFormat.format("This is {0} string", "my");

will return you "This is my string".

Will this suffice ?

[Gaz Johnson]

its in the format

<local string variable><space><string variable derived from a method>

its the space which will vary. I'm guessing theres an easier way than looping through to check for longest string, then setting the space in between the two according to (longest string - lengthOfCurrentString)

So i'm not sure that package would be suitable? Thanks for the reply though, appreciate the help.

[Gaz Johnson]

Done!

For anyone else searching for same kinda thing :

String s = String.format("%-20s %-20s", "Field one : ", "data");
String t = String.format("%-20s %-20s", "Scond field : ", "more data");
       
return(s+"\n"+t);

[Campbell Ritchie]

That was the sort of thing I was thinking about, (well done ), but I would suggest some improvements.

If you are using format or anything else which calls Formatter, avoid \n. You are better off with a %n tag, as it says in the Java™ Tutorials here.
Maybe, for performance reasons, try to avoid the + operator. If the format String is too long for the lines, try appending to a StringBuilder, then use the toString() method of StringBuilder to return the final result. StringBuilder is specially designed for rapid appending or insertion.

return String.format("%-20s %-20s%n%-20s %-20s", "Field one : ", "data", "Scond field : ", "more data");

String s = String.format("%-20s %-20s%n", "Field one : ", "data");
StringBuilder builder = new StringBuilder(s);
builder.append(String.format("%-20s %-20s", "Scond field : ", "more data"));
       
return builder.toString();

[Joanne Neal]

Campbell Ritchie wrote:Maybe, for performance reasons, try to avoid the + operator.

Sorry to correct you twice in one day

It's actually better to use the + operator when concatenating Strings as this allows the compiler to optimise the code.
In Java 1.5 and 1.6 it optimises it by using StringBuilder to build the final string, but if you actually use StringBuilder explicitly then this won't allow later versions of the compiler to use alternative optimisations.

[Campbell Ritchie]

All right, Joanne. Caught me out twice running.