Padding Strings In C#

Padding in string is adding a space or other character at the beginning or end of a string. The String class has String.PadLeft() and String.PadRight() methods to pad strings in left and right sides.

In C#, Strings are immutable. That means the method does not update the existing string but returns a new string.

String.PadLeft()

String.PadLeft() method has two overloaded forms.

Method	Description
PadLeft(Int32)	Returns a new string that right-aligns the characters in this instance by padding them with spaces on the left, for a specified total length.
PadLeft(Int32, Char)	Returns a new string that right-aligns the characters in this instance by padding them on the left with a specified Unicode character, for a specified total length.

Example

The following example replaces all commas with colons in a string.

// Pad left example
string hello = "Hello C# Corner.";
// Make string size 50. All left side will be spaces
string hello50 = hello.PadLeft(50);
Console.WriteLine(hello50);
// Pad left with a character
string helloHash = hello.PadLeft(50, '#');
Console.WriteLine(helloHash);

Listing 1.

The output of Listing 1 looks like Figure 1.

Figure 1.

String.PadRight()

String.PadRight() method has two overloaded forms.

Method	Description
PadRight(Int32)	Returns a new string that left-aligns the characters in this string by padding them with spaces on the right, for a specified total length.
PadRight(Int32, Char)	Returns a new string that left-aligns the characters in this string by padding them on the right with a specified Unicode character, for a specified total length.

Example

The following example replaces all commas with colon in a string.

// Pad right example
string hello = "Hello C# Corner.";
// Make string size 50. All right side will be spaces
string hello50 = hello.PadRight(50);
Console.WriteLine(hello50);
// Pad right with a character
string helloHash = hello.PadRight(50, '#');
Console.WriteLine(helloHash);

Listing 2.

The output of Listing 2 looks like Figure 2.

Figure 2