How to pad a string to a fixed length with spaces

format, python, string

Solution

This is super simple with `format`:

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

Problem

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 official Python book for 30 minutes trying to find out how to do this. Problem: I need to put a string in a certain length "field". For example, if the name field was 15 characters long, and my name was John, I would get "John" followed by 11 spaces to create the 15 character field. I need this to work for any string put in for the variable "name". I know it will likely be some form of formatting, but I can't find the exact way to do this. Help would be appreciated.

Original source

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