Java formatting to maintain a small start positon for combination of columns

Question

I have written a small program to fetch data from a table and display it in a text area.

They are getting displayed but also getting indended based on character spacing. Can any one tell how to resolve this, I want each column to maintain a specific start position.

while (itr.hasNext()) {

    abc = abc + String.format(
                                        "%-7s %3s %-7s %-3s %10s   %-10s %10s     %-8s %-8s %-8s %-8s\n",
                                        itr.next(), itr.next(), itr.next(),
                                        itr.next(), itr.next(), itr.next(),
                                        itr.next(), itr.next(), itr.next(),
                                        itr.next(), itr.next());
                                            }
    textArea.setText(abc);
    textArea.setLineWrap(false);
}

Answer 1

You have two choices: either use a large enough string lengths (which may, after you change the data, become too low a value anyway) or dynamically calcluate the maximum length of data in each column, use it to determine the string format, and then write the data using that format. To do so you would have to iterate over the data twice - once to calculate and then to print.