Node.js formatted console output

Question

Is there a simple built-in way to output formatted data to console in Node.js?

Indent, align field to left or right, add leading zeros?

Answer 1

There's nothing built into NodeJS to do this. The "closest" you'd come is util.format, which still doesn't do much unfortunately (reference).

You'll need to look into other modules to provide a richer formatting experience. For example: sprintf.

Sprintf-js allows both positional (0, 1, 2) arguments and named arguments.

A few examples of padding and alignment:

var sprintf=require("sprintf-js").sprintf;

console.log(sprintf("Space Padded => %10.2f", 123.4567));
console.log(sprintf("    _ Padded => %'_10.2f", 123.4567));
console.log(sprintf("    0 Padded => %010.2f", 123.4567));
console.log(sprintf(" Left align => %-10.2f", 123.4567));

Results:

Space Padded =>     123.46
    _ Padded => ____123.46
    0 Padded => 0000123.46
 Left align => 123.46