Simple and elegant way to zero-pad a value in C# [duplicate]

Question

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C# convert int to string with padding zeros? (15 answers)

Closed 9 years ago.

I have to fix malformed zipcodes. The people who exported the data treated the zipcode as a numeric and as a result New Jersey and Puerto Rico zipcodes, which begin with a leading zero and two leading zeroes respectively, have been truncated.

They're supposed to be all five characters (no zip+4 data is involved). I know how to zero-pad brute-force by getting the length and prepending the appropriate number of zeroes to the string, but is there a more elegant way that draws on the "native" features of C#? For example, can a mask be applied that would turn "9163" into "09163" and "904" into "00904" without my having to get the length of the value?

Answer 1

If you have an integer value, use the composite format string to ensure padding:

var padded1 = 1.ToString("D5");

The number after D is for the length you need the value to be in.

Answer 2

string test = "9163";
test = test.PadLeft (5, '0');

Answer 3

  string s = string.Format("{0:00000}", 1234);

  Console.WriteLine(s);

Format String Reference

Answer 4

string one = a.ToString("00000"); // 00904