How can I pad a string with spaces from the right and left?
python, string
Solution
You can look into `str.ljust` and `str.rjust` I believe.
The alternative is probably to use the format method:
>>> '{:<30}'.format('left aligned')
'left aligned '
>>> '{:>30}'.format('right aligned')
' right aligned'
>>> '{:^30}'.format('centered')
' centered '
>>> '{:*^30}'.format('centered') # use '*' as a fill char
'***********centered***********'
Problem
I have two scenarios where I need to pad a string with whitespaces up to a certain length, in both the left and right directions (in separate cases). For instance, I have the string: ``` TEST ``` but I need to make the string variable ``` _____TEST1 ``` so that the actual string variable is 10 characters in length (led by 5 spaces in this case). NOTE: I am showing underscores to represent whitespace (the markdown doesn't look right on SO otherwise). I also need to figure out how to reverse it and pad whitespace from the other direction: ``` TEST2_____ ``` Are there any string helper functions to do this? Or would I need to create a character array to manage it? Also note, that I am trying to keep the string length a variable (I used a length of 10 in the examples above, but I'll need to be able to change this). Any help would be awesome. If there are any `python` functions to manage this, I'd rather avoid having to write something from the ground up. Thanks!