How Can I Efficiently Pad a Python String with Spaces?

Filling a Python String with Spaces

When working with strings, you may encounter scenarios where you need to pad a string with a specific number of spaces. While you can manually calculate the spaces and concatenate them to the string, a more efficient approach is available in Python.

Solution: Utilizing str.ljust()

To fill out a string with spaces, you can utilize the str.ljust() method, which left-justifies a string within a specified width. It has the following syntax:

str.ljust(width[, fillchar])

• width: The desired width of the padded string.
• fillchar: An optional character (defaults to space) used for padding.

Example

For instance, if you want to pad the string "hi" with 10 spaces, you can use the following code:

'hi'.ljust(10)

This will return the string "hi " padded with 10 spaces.

Custom Fill Character

You can specify a custom fill character instead of the default space. For example, to pad the string "hello" with 5 underscores:

'hello'.ljust(10, '_')

This will result in "hello____", where the missing spaces are replaced with underscores.

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