[GROOVY-438] String objects could use left-pad and right-pad methods

• Type: Improvement
• Status: Closed
• Priority: Minor
• Resolution: Fixed
• Affects Version/s: 1.0-beta-4
• Fix Version/s: 1.0-beta-5
• Component/s: groovy-jdk
• Environment: 1.0-beta-4, Mac OS X 10.3.3, Java 1.4.2
• Assignee: Guillaume Sauthier
• Reporter: Marshall McMullen
• Created: 28/Apr/04 17:03
• Updated: 29/Apr/04 20:55
• Resolved: 29/Apr/04 20:55

Description

When formatting output for scripts run from the command line and plain-text reports, it is useful to be able to pad a string to a given width so that columns can line up. Python and Ruby provide ljust() and rjust() methods on string objects for this: "3.4".rjust(8) creates an 8-character string with the text "3.4" right-aligned in it.

The StringUtils class in commons-lang has padLeft() and padRight() methods – as well as center() – but it would be much nicer to have these directly accessible from string objects instead of using static members of an outside class.