Thread: Formatting white space to 3 characters in parentheses

Hello,
In my program i have to count a certain number of days and increase the counter as it goes through the loop. I have to display this number in parenthesis with exactly 3 spaces(including numbers) enclosed in the parenthesis as see below:

Yearly temperature data for Denver
<= 9 ( 3):***
10 - 19 ( 4):****
20 - 29 ( 9):*********
30 - 39 ( 27):***************************
40 - 49 ( 47):********************************************** *
50 - 59 ( 66):********************************************** ********************
60 - 69 ( 62):********************************************** ****************
70 - 79 ( 44):********************************************
80 - 89 ( 66):********************************************** ********************
90 - 99 ( 37):*************************************
>=100 ( 0):



How would i make it to where the parentheses only allow 3 characters at all times? Meaning that if it was 5 it would just show ( 5) <----- has two spaces before the 5, and if it was 15 it would just show ( 15)<----has one space before the 15, and if it was 114 it would show (114) <----no spaces, just numbers

i am using the format method right now and if i use "000" it will still show the leading zero(for two digit numbers)...if i use "###" it will just display the number by itself and no spaces at all.



any help would be greatly appreciated! Thank you!!

Consider using the String.format() method. The format string is described in detail in the Formatter API linked to from there. They take a little getting used to, but are quite flexible.

public class FormatterEg {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        int[] data = {-5, 0, 1, 42, 666};
        for(int test :data) {
            System.out.printf("(%3d)%n", test);
        }
 
            // once more, with precision...
        double[] data2 = {-1, 0, Math.PI, Math.E};
        for(double test :data2) {
            System.out.printf("(%-8.4f)%n", test);
        }
    }
}

The first format string means:

( literal left parenthesis
% format
3 three wide
d decimal integer
) literal right parenthesis
%n new line

The second one illustrates how a fixed number of decimal places can be obtained (with correct rounding).

( literal left parenthesis
% format
- left align
8 eight wide
.4 including four decimal places
f floating point number
) literal right parenthesis
%n new line