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Thread: Printf syntax woes

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    Default Printf syntax woes

    I have this line of code:

    System.out.printf("%8.1f", solutions[i][j]);

    Where solutions is a two-dimensional array. This is within a nested for loop, but don't worry about all of that. This line of code is successfully printing the value of "solutions", rounding to 1 decimal, and aligning each result to the far right of 8 spaces.

    I want to align it in the center, not the far right.

    So I looked at this site:

    Complete Printf for Java Format String Specification

    Which says I can use the "^" flag to center the result in the given specified width.

    And that I should use this format: %[flags][width][.precision][argsize]typechar

    So I wrote this code:

    System.out.printf("%^8.1f", solutions[i][j]);

    Which compiles, but creates a run time error.

    This is the error:

    HTML Code:
    Exception in thread "main" java.util.UnknownFormatConversionException: Conversion = '^'
            at java.util.Formatter.checkText(Formatter.java:2547)
            at java.util.Formatter.parse(Formatter.java:2533)
            at java.util.Formatter.format(Formatter.java:2469)
            at java.io.PrintStream.format(PrintStream.java:970)
            at java.io.PrintStream.printf(PrintStream.java:871)
            at HW1.printTable(HW1.java:95)
            at HW1.main(HW1.java:23)


    What am I doing wrong?

    Thanks in advance.


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    Default Re: Printf syntax woes

    I believe the documentation you're referring to (and provided a link to) is for a 3rd party add-on or library. The official Java Formatter documentation is here.

  3. The Following User Says Thank You to GregBrannon For This Useful Post:

    ineedahero (September 21st, 2013)

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    Default Re: Printf syntax woes

    Okay, I figured out how to make it left-aligned and it actually looks like how I want it to be. Couldn't find anything on center-alignment...it seems really esoteric. But it doesn't matter- left-alignment looks much nicer than I thought.

    Thank you a lot for the help...I never would have known.

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