CODEWITHSUNDEEP
vb.netstring-formatting
Cody Syring
Cody Syring

Reputation: 13

Formating In Visual Basic

 lstPrint.Items.Add(String.Format("{0,-20} {1,5}", "Denomination", "Count"))

        For x As Integer = 0 To 6
            lstPrint.Items.Add(String.Format("{0,-20} {1,13:S}", ouputArray(x), "Count"))
        Next

For the sake of making things easier, Dim outputArray As String() = {"1$", "2$", "5$", "10$", "20$", "50$", "100$"}, and I swapped the second array and made it just say Count.

enter image description here

typically I would simply use Convert.ToChar(Keys.Tab) to make all my columns line up, but I'm trying to get better with string formatting. How would I go about compensating for the difference in characters?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 190

Answers (2)

Mary
Mary

Reputation: 15091

I set the font for the list box to a fixed width font. Next I got the length of the longest string in the array. I used .PadLeft to make all the strings the same length.

Private Sub OPCode()
    ListBox1.Font = New Font("Consolas", 12)
    Dim outputArray As String() = {"1$", "2$", "5$", "10$", "20$", "50$", "100$"}
    Dim longest As Integer = outputArray.OrderByDescending(Function(s) s.Length).FirstOrDefault().Length
    For Each s In outputArray
        ListBox1.Items.Add(s.PadLeft(longest) & "    Count")
    Next
End Sub

The result: enter image description here

Upvotes: 1

jmcilhinney
jmcilhinney

Reputation: 54417

You need to use a fixed-width font if you expect that sort of formatting to produce aligned text. Spaces are much narrower than other characters in variable-width fonts.

Otherwise, how about using a control that actually has columns instead of a ListBox, e.g. ListView or DataGridView? Using the best tool for the job is always a good idea.

Upvotes: 4

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