Printing leading 0's in C
c, printf
Solution
printf("%05d", zipCode);
The `0` indicates what you are padding with and the `5` shows the width of the integer number.
Example 1: If you use `"%02d"` (useful for dates) this would only pad zeros for numbers in the ones column. E.g., `06` instead of `6`.
Example 2: `"%03d"` would pad 2 zeros for one number in the ones column and pad 1 zero for a number in the tens column. E.g., number 7 padded to `007` and number 17 padded to `017`.
Problem
I'm trying to find a good way to print leading `0`, such as `01001` for a ZIP Code. While the number would be stored as `1001`, what is a good way to do it? I thought of using either `case` statements or `if` to figure out how many digits the number is and then convert it to an `char` array with extra `0`'s for printing, but I can't help but think there may be a way to do this with the `printf` format syntax that is eluding me.