How to pad zeroes to a string?

Question

What is a Pythonic way to pad a numeric string with zeroes to the left, i.e. so the numeric string has a specific length?

Answer 1

For the ones who came here to understand and not just a quick answer. I do these especially for time strings:

hour = 4
minute = 3
"{:0>2}:{:0>2}".format(hour,minute)
# prints 04:03

"{:0>3}:{:0>5}".format(hour,minute)
# prints '004:00003'

"{:0<3}:{:0<5}".format(hour,minute)
# prints '400:30000'

"{:$<3}:{:#<5}".format(hour,minute)
# prints '4$$:3####'

"0" symbols what to replace with the "2" padding characters, the default is an empty space

">" symbols allign all the 2 "0" character to the left of the string

":" symbols the format_spec