How to pad a string to a fixed length with spaces in Python?

Question

I\'m sure this is covered in plenty of places, but I don\'t know the exact name of the action I\'m trying to do so I can\'t really look it up. I\'ve been reading an officia

Answer 1

string = ""
name = raw_input() #The value at the field
length = input() #the length of the field
string += name
string += " "*(length-len(name)) # Add extra spaces

This will add the number of spaces needed, provided the field has length >= the length of the name provided

Answer 2

You can use the ljust method on strings.

>>> name = 'John'
>>> name.ljust(15)
'John           '

Note that if the name is longer than 15 characters, ljust won't truncate it. If you want to end up with exactly 15 characters, you can slice the resulting string:

>>> name.ljust(15)[:15]

Answer 3

Just whipped this up for my problem, it just adds a space until the length of string is more than the min_length you give it.

def format_string(str, min_length):
    while len(str) < min_length:
        str += " "
    return str

Answer 4

This is super simple with format:

>>> a = "John"
>>> "{:<15}".format(a)
'John           '

Answer 5

If you have python version 3.6 or higher you can use f strings

>>> string = "John"
>>> f"{string:<15}"
'John           '

Or if you'd like it to the left

>>> f"{string:>15}"
'          John'

Centered

>>> f"{string:^15}"
'     John      '

For more variations, feel free to check out the docs: https://docs.python.org/3/library/string.html#format-string-syntax

Answer 6

name = "John" // your variable
result = (name+"               ")[:15] # this adds 15 spaces to the "name"
                                       # but cuts it at 15 characters