Reputation: 2140
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?
Upvotes: 8
Views: 7750
Reputation: 41238
You could use str.ljust
and slice the string:
>>> 'testsdf'.ljust(5)[:5]
'tests'
>>> 'test'.ljust(5)[:5]
'test '
Upvotes: 6
Reputation: 215137
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 '
Upvotes: 16