String.format() to fill a string?
<p>I need to fill a String to a certain length with dashes, like:</p>

<pre><code>cow-----8
cow-----9
cow----10
...
cow---100
</code></pre>

<p>the total length of the string needs to be 9. The prefix "cow" is constant. I'm iterating up to an input number. I can do this in an ugly way:</p>

<pre><code>String str = "cow";
for (int i = 0; i &lt; 1000; i++) {
    if (i &lt; 10) {
        str += "-----";
    } 
    else if (i &lt; 100) {
        str += "----";
    }
    else if (i &lt; 1000) {
        str += "---";
    }
    else if (i &lt; 10000) {
        str += "--";
    }
    str += i;
}
</code></pre>

<p>can I do the same thing more cleanly with string format?</p>

<p>Thanks</p>
