Answer by rch for Printing leading 0's in C?

More flexible.. Here's an example printing rows of right-justified numbers with fixed widths, and space-padding.

//---- Header
std::string getFmt ( int wid, long val )
{  
  char buf[64];
  sprintf ( buf, "% *ld", wid, val );
  return buf;
}
#define FMT (getFmt(8,x).c_str())

//---- Put to use
printf ( "      COUNT     USED     FREE\n" );
printf ( "A: %s %s %s\n", FMT(C[0]), FMT(U[0]), FMT(F[0]) );
printf ( "B: %s %s %s\n", FMT(C[1]), FMT(U[1]), FMT(F[1]) );
printf ( "C: %s %s %s\n", FMT(C[2]), FMT(U[2]), FMT(F[2]) );

//-------- Output
      COUNT     USED     FREE
A:      354   148523     3283
B: 54138259 12392759   200391
C:    91239     3281    61423

The function and macro are designed so the printfs are more readable.