Formatted Printing on Console Application

I've got a console application that stores information. I have an option that the end user can select that will print the colon-delimited file into a formatted print. I want several different columns, but I want to control the width. I know certain information cannot be longer than X number of characters. For instance I want to print something like:

Number | Name | Address | Zip |
1 Frank 123 Main St. 47887

Does C# have any functionality that will allow this? I was thinking Console.Write would work, but I want to be able to pad each side with whitespace.

Any information would be greatly appreciated!

Padding is specified in String.Format with "{0,-xx}" where xx is the number of characters to pad.

So you can print out the header information with

Code:

---

var formatter = "{0,-10}{1,-50}{2,-60}{3,-10}";
Console.WriteLine(String.Format(formatter, "Number", "Name", "Address", "Zip"));

---

Each entry could be printed as (assuming a class name Entry contains each item data):

Code:

---

Console.WriteLine(String.Format(formatter, entry.Number, entry.Name, entry.Address, entry.Zip));

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Another way to do this for simple apps is to override a class's ToString() method.

Code:

---

public class Entry
{
  public int Number { get; set; }
  public string Name { get; set; }
  public string Address { get; set; }
  public string Zip { get; set; }

  public override ToString()
  {
    return String.Format(Formatter, Number, Name, Address, Zip);
  }

  public static string Formatter =  "{0,-10}{1,-50}{2,-60}{3,-10}";
}

---

Then you can print the header and each line item as follow (assuming entries are a List<Entry> collection):

Code:

---

Console.WriteLine(String.Format(Entry.Formatter, "Number", "Name", "Address", "Zip"));
foreach(var entry in entries)
{
  Console.WriteLine(entry);
}

---

See String.Format in msdn for more info.