Trying to pad decimal number with leading spaces

Question

for (int iCount = 0; iCount < oForm.LineItems.Count; iCount++)
           {

// cartDetails is a stringbuilder here.

     cartDetails.Append(String.Format("{0:0}", oForm.LineItems[iCount].Quantity));
     cartDetails.Append(String.Format("{0:0.00}", oForm.LineItems[iCount].Price));
     cartDetails.Append(String.Format("{0:0.00}", oForm.LineItems[iCount].ExtendedPrice));

     //cartDetails.Append(string.Format("{0,10:#,##0.00}", oForm.LineItems[iCount].Price) + "</TD><TD>");
     //cartDetails.Append(string.Format("{0,10:#,##0.00}", oForm.LineItems[iCount].ExtendedPrice) + "</TD><TD>");
     //cartDetails.Append(String.Format("{0}", oForm.LineItems[iCount].Quantity).PadLeft(4)+ "</TD><TD>");
     //cartDetails.Append(String.Format("{0:0.00}", oForm.LineItems[iCount].Price).PadLeft(8) + "</TD><TD>");

I have pastd the source code I am using. I add qty, price, extendedprice and all are decimal columns. All I am looking to do is to pad left with leading spaces. Decimal rounding to 2 digits seems to be happening.

Those commented lines above are some of the other options I have tried. Currently if qty has values such as 4 and 40, they don't get aligned when I print them in a table. Same with price.

CAn someone please suggest what am I doing here?

Update1: Tried Lucas suggestion, but it is not working. Here is what I am geting.

cartDetails.Append(String.Format("{0:0,10}", oForm.LineItems[iCount].Quantity));

When I try the above, it shows 10 for every line irrespective of the value in oForm.LineItems[iCount].Quantity.

And if I change String.Format("{0:0,4}", it shows 04 for all the records

Why not use `AppendFormat`? – Sergey Berezovskiy Nov 29 '12 at 19:54 — Sergey Berezovskiy, Nov 29 '12 at 19:54
@lazyberezovsky: Can you provide me an example? – NewCoder Nov 29 '12 at 20:06 — NewCoder, Nov 29 '12 at 20:06

Sergey Berezovskiy · Answer 1 · 2012-11-29T20:18:16.283

5

You can use AppendFormat method instead of appending formatted string. Also correct format will be {index,padding:format}. And consider to use foreach instead of for:

foreach (var lineItem in oForm.LineItems)
{ 
    cartDetails.AppendFormat("{0,4:0}", lineItem.Quantity);
    cartDetails.AppendFormat("{0,10:0.00}", lineItem.Price);
    // etc
}

edited Nov 29 '12 at 20:18

answered Nov 29 '12 at 20:12

Sergey Berezovskiy

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I tried your approach and for lineItem.Price which has decimal place it doesn't trim to 2 digits and if it is even number (say 157) it doesn't output as 157.00. I tried with foreach but lineItem doesn't show quantity, price within lineitem. – NewCoder Nov 29 '12 at 20:53
1

@NewCoder just verified - `{0,10:0.00}` trims decimal to 2 digits. I.e. `34.123` will be displayed as `34.12`. Verify your code. – Sergey Berezovskiy Nov 29 '12 at 21:11
It trims to 2 digits but when it is 157, it doesn't output as 157.00. – NewCoder Nov 29 '12 at 21:12
@NewCoder verify your code. `0.00` will format 157 as `157.00`. `0.##` will format 157 as `157` – Sergey Berezovskiy Nov 29 '12 at 21:20
It works fine now. Can you suggest why does lineItem doesn't work when I use foreach loop. Thanks. – NewCoder Nov 29 '12 at 21:28
@NewCoder it depends.. What type lineItems has? What type of LineItems collection? – Sergey Berezovskiy Nov 29 '12 at 21:37

Lukas Winzenried · Accepted Answer · 2012-11-29T20:10:47.800

1

Remark: This is for alignemend in caracter based representation such as text files

Have a look at the last section in composite formatting (MSDN).

First format the number as desired and the pad the result

cartDetails.AppendFormat("{0,4}", // padding with spaces
    String.Format("{0:0}", oForm.LineItems[iCount].Quantity));  // format number

Addtition: If you want to position your data in a html table you should use css (or inline styles)

<td class="right">This is right aligned</td>

with css

.right { text-align: right; }

or inlined:

<td style="text-align: right">This is right aligned</td>

edited Nov 29 '12 at 20:10

answered Nov 29 '12 at 19:53

Lukas Winzenried

1,919
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cartDetails.Append(String.Format("{0:0,10}", oForm.LineItems[iCount].Quantity)); When I try this, it shows 10 for every line irrespective of the value in oForm.LineItems[iCount].Quantity. And if I change to String.Format("{0:0,4}", it shows 04 for all the records. – NewCoder Nov 29 '12 at 20:04
Ok I see, only strings are padded with spaces. Will update my sample. – Lukas Winzenried Nov 29 '12 at 20:13
I see that text-align is important here which I had missed. – NewCoder Nov 29 '12 at 20:59

Trying to pad decimal number with leading spaces

2 Answers2