Pad A String In JavaScript

24th September 2008 - 3 minutes read time

Use the following function to pad a string with to a set length with a given string. The function takes three parameters. The string to be padded, the total number of characters that the string must be, and the string to be added. If the third parameter is not given then 0 is used as a default.

function pad(padMe, totalChars, padWith) {
  padMe = padMe + ""; // force num to be string
 padWith = (padWith) ? padWith :"0"; // set default pad
 if ( padMe.length < totalChars ) {
  while ( padMe.length < totalChars ) {
    padMe = padWith + padMe;
  }
 }
 return padMe;
}

Here are some examples of the function in action. If the string given is longer than the required pad length then the string is returned unchanged.

alert(pad("1", 4, "0")); // 0001
alert(pad("9", 4, "7")); // 7779
alert(pad("0002", 7, "this is a string")); // this is a string 0002
alert(pad("12345", 4, "0")); // 12345

 

JavaScript

Add new comment

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.

Related Content

Getting Up And Running With Nightwatch.js

24th July 2022

Nightwatch.js is an end to end testing framework, written in JavaScript. It can be used to test websites and applications and uses the W3C WebDriver API to drive modern browsers to perform the tests.

In this article I will look at setting up Nightwatch.js in a project and getting started with writing tests.

Read more.

Creating Presentations In Markdown With Marp

15th May 2022

Marp or Markdown Presentation Ecosystem is a collection of tools that allows the generation of presentations of different formats from a markdown template. The tools are written in JavaScript and have a number of options that allow presentations of different styles and formats.

Read more.

Creating A Reading Progress Bar In JavaScript

9th January 2022

Adding a progress bar to the top of the page is a simple way of showing the user how far down the page they have read. There is a scroll bar on the right hand side of the page on my current device, but that isn't always present on all devices.

Read more.

Animating Number Updates With jQuery

5th December 2021

I was working on a user dashboard recently and decided to add some more signposting to values being updated.  Users were able to select different parameters in order to produce different values, but I thought that the values being updated weren't clear enough.

Read more.

Using Shadow DOM

23rd March 2021

When I first heard the term "Shadow DOM" I had to laugh at the name. I had visions of a cloak and dagger HTML element that would only be seen on the dark web. Or some sort of nefarious shadow site that was the after effect of a hack.

Read more.