string.Format in XElement not formatting

Question

I'm trying to format an XML element with three strings padded to 10 characters with spaces. Here is the code I'm using.

The three strings are set in the model.

    public string a{ get; set; }
    public string b{ get; set; }
    public string c{ get; set; }

and then formated to an XElement

var itemElement = new XElement("item",
                            new XElement("abc", string.Format("{0:-10}{1:-10}{2:-10}", i.a, i.b, i.c))
                    );

it should be producing "a(padding)b(padding)c(padding)", but is producing "abc" within the node.

Any ideas?

for `a(padding)b(padding)c(padding)` wouldn't you need `string.Format("{0:10}{1:10}{2:10}", i.a, i.b, i.c)` ? — Bala R, Jun 20 '11 at 20:38

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered Jun 20 '11 at 20:48

3

The correct String.Format syntax is to use a comma for alignment, not a colon:

string.Format("{0,-10}{1,-10}{2,-10}", i.a, i.b, i.c)

Per MSDN:

The syntax of a format item is as follows:

{index[,length][:formatString]}

answered Jun 20 '11 at 20:48

Ahmad Mageed

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score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Jun 20 '11 at 20:40

Try wrapping in an CData element:

var itemElement = new XElement("item", 
    new XCData(
        new XElement("abc", string.Format("{0:-10}{1:-10}{2:-10}", i.a, i.b, i.c))));

You need this, because whitespace is not considered significant by XML parsers by default. An alternative to using CData would be the xml:space attribute, which should also produce the desired result. See this MSDN page for details.

string.Format in XElement not formatting

2 Answers2

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