Simple Printing Question 1

[thumpkidd9]

Hello,
I have always wondered this but finally had to implement something that needed it. I want to print values to the screen but with some kind of order. I'm using println() with '\t' character but its not lining up at all. I know there must be a better way to line up the data, which can be entered dynamically so I dont know the size of the space needed. I'm looking for something like this. Nothing too in depth but clean.

No. Price Paid

1. 20.00 30.00

Thanks,

 

[sedj]

Print to what screen ?

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Free Java/J2EE Database Connection Pooling Software

http://www.primrose.org.uk

 

[Bong]

The best way I've ever come up with (and I'm a real novice so there are bound to be better ways) is to use a Char array to place the individual items within, and then print the Char array.

So, I declare the array:
char[] ttl;

then I set its length (based on how may characters wide the whole display is to be):
ttl = new char[stln];

then, each time after I've printed it, I need to zero it out:
for (int i=0;i<stln;i++) {ttl=" ".charAt(0);}

then I put characters in the array from strings I want to display. For example, a string, title:
for (int j=0; j<title.length(); j++) {ttl[j+((i+1)*colwdth)]=title.charAt(j);}

In my case, I'm displaying the data in a TextArea, ta1:
ta1.append(new String(ttl)+"\n");

_________________
Bob Rashkin

 

[thumpkidd9]

To answere sedj, I am printing strings to the screen, for example this is way off and depends on the length of dynamically entered values for price, paid..etc:

System.out.println("No. \tPrice \tPaid \tAddress \tDevelopment \tCash/Credit");

System.out.println((x+1)+". "+curr.price+"\t"+curr.paid+"\t"+curr.addr+"\t\t"+curr.dev+"\t\t"+curr.cacr);

Bong, you had me till TextArea. Is that only for applets? Because I've never used them and wasn't planning on messing with them till later.

Thanks for help

 

[Bong]

No, a TextArea is just a GUI device for writing text. Just println() the string constructed from the character array.

_________________
Bob Rashkin

 

[thumpkidd9]

Great ! I dont have time at the moment, but I will give that a shot in the afternoon and keep you posted. Thanks for fast response.

 

[h0h0h0]

create a SpecialString which contains a string.

SpecialString(string, width); //constructor for string and width to print it

SpecialString.toPrint() should be overridden to print based on the width passed in.

 

[thumpkidd9]

h0h0h0: I'm not sure how SpecialString works and don't know what I need to import to compile that, my java isn't picking it up.

Bong: I tried your method but I am a little confused. Were the for loops supposed to be nested because you are referencing i in the second one. Also you said, "then, each time after I've printed it" Did you mean printed the char array?

Sorry for the confusion,
Matt

 

[Bong]

Sorry. I was just putting in what I thought were the highlights. Here's some more of the details.

I set a column width:
int colwdth=11;

I have a number of columns (in this case I call it clen. I define the string length in terms of the number of columns and the column width:
stln=(clen+1)*colwdth;
ttl = new char[stln];

Then I calculate what it is I want to display in an array. I loop through the columns, inserting the characters in the character array:
for (int i=0;i<clen;i++) {
title = String.valueOf(totals[indx]); [red]//this is the string value to be displayed[/red]
for (int j=0;j<title.length();j++) {
ttl[((i+1)*colwdth)+j]=title.charAt(j);[red]//j indexes each character in the value I want to insert[/red]
}
}

then I display the string made from the character array:
ta1.append(new String(ttl)+"\n");

You would probably use
println(new String(ttl));


_________________
Bob Rashkin

 

[Bong]

Try this:

class colprn {
//    main method
    public static void main(String args[]) {
         int numcols = 4;
         int colwdth = 5;
         char holder[] = new char[numcols*colwdth];
         String s[]=new String[4];
         String sval;
         s[0]="abc";
         s[1]="def";
         s[2]="ghi";
         s[3]="jkl";
         for (int rown=0;rown<4; rown++) {
               for (int i=0; i<numcols*colwdth; i++) {holder[i]=" ".charAt(0);}
               for (int i=0;i<numcols;i++) {
                   sval = s[i];
                   for (int j=0;j<sval.length();j++) {
                       holder[(i*colwdth)+j]=sval.charAt(j);
                   }
               }
               System.out.println(new String(holder));
         }

    }
}

_________________
Bob Rashkin

 

[thumpkidd9]

Thanks for the time and effort you spent on helping me. I got it to work and its working good. All I modified is if a string was entered that was larger than my colwdth, I made a substring of it and added ".." to the end. The next part that I am going to try and do is instead of one colwdth value, have a dynamic value depending on what column your in. This way, for example the two fields, Address and Male/Female can get an appropiate alloted space, say 25 for Address and 2 for Male/Female.

Thanks again,
~matt