How to print() colums

[Alan G]

I'm grateful for any help here!

My program is generally quite a simple problem; must read in a list containing names and numbers and print it out like a phonebook in alphabetical order, in order of surname, comma, forename, and a number in a 2nd column. An example of the input is:

Fred Flintstone 555437
John Wayne 645373
Michael Schumacher 0343653
etc.

And the output should be:

Flintstone, Fred

555437

Michael, Schumacher

0343653

John, Wayne

645373

In my program I must create a class called person (strings of forename surname etc). I have an array of type Person (each array slot contains 3 strings [I use the number as a string]).

Everything works perfectly. The only problem is the printing part. As normal I'm printing the array with a for loop, concatenating the elements in the desired order, eg

static void printPerson(Person[] bk, int length)
{
for (int y = 0; y < length; y++)
{
String num = bk[y].number;
System.out.println(bk[y].surname + ", " + bk[y].forename + ('\t') + ('\t') + bk[y].number);
}
}


Of course what happens here is that when a name is above a certain length, the number will tab over even further. So it's not a solution. I was recommended to look at using printf(), but not getting the result with it. So anybody have any idea (...quite likely a simple answer!)

[horace1]

use system.out.printf
http://java.sun.com/developer/technicalArticles/Programming/sprintf/

e.g.

    String s1="Fred Flintstone";
    int i1=555437;
    String s2="John Wayne";
    int i2= 645373;
    String s3="Michael Schumacher";
    int i3= 0343653;
    System.out.printf("%25s %10d\n", s1, i1);
    System.out.printf("%25s %10d\n", s2, i2);
    System.out.printf("%25s %10d\n", s3, i3);
 

would print

          Fred Flintstone     555437
               John Wayne     645373
       Michael Schumacher     116651