string format

[Marielle Lange]

There was some discussion not long ago on how to add spaces such that  
a string fills a given fixed length. I discovered today that it was  
in fact possible to use the equivalent of the sprintf command found  
in c:

format(baseString[,valuesList])
format("Hello world") -- returns "Hello world"
format("Hello\nworld") -- returns "Hello" on one line, "world" on next
format("%1.3e",865.3) -- returns 8.653e+02, scientific notation
format("%o in octal\n%x in hex.",myNumber,myNumber)
format("%45d",5) -- returns "5" preceded by 45 spaces

Also look for:

String:
%[charLength]s
The corresponding value is unchanged, except that if a charLength is  
specified, if the string is shorter than the charLength, enough  
leading spaces are added to make it charLength characters long. If  
the length of the string is equal to or greater than the charLength,  
it is unchanged. For example, the incantation %3s transforms "H" to  
"  H".

Best,
Marielle