Pad or truncate string based on fixed length

python, string, string-formatting

Solution

You can use `5.5` to combine truncating and padding so that the output will always be of length of five:

'{:5.5}'.format('testsdf')
# 'tests'

'{:5.5}'.format('test')
# 'test '

Problem

Currently have code that looks something like; ``` print '{: <5}'.format('test') ``` This will pad my string with `' '` if it is less than 5 characters. If the string is more than 5 characters, I'd need the string to be truncated. Without explicitly checking the length of my string before formatting it, is there a better way to pad if less than fixed length or truncate if greater than fixed length?

Original source