System.out.println Special Characters

[David Dickinson]

Hi,

Does the command System.out.println have any special functions which enter tabs into the stream or anything like that? Features which would improve the formatting of the console output?

For instance I have multiple lines and wish for the information to be displayed like so..

Report xyz calculates currency exchange �-$ = $120
Report xyz calculates oil price rise to be = $110/day

Etc etc so the equals column is always level

[Ernest Friedman-Hill]

You can embed a tab in a string using the escape sequence \t -- i.e.,

System.out.print("\t")

prints a tab character.

[Mike Gershman]

System.out.println( "oil price" + '\t' + "$50" );
System.out.println( "wine price" + '\t' + "$60" );

Be aware that the number of spaces between tabs could be 5, so hitting the same tab to align columns requires a bit of planning.