From: Pawel Szymczykowski <makenai@...>
Date: 2006-05-29T19:53:19+09:00
Subject: Re: Equivalent of Python zfill?

On 5/29/06, Peter Szinek <peter@rubyrailways.com> wrote:
> Robert,
>
> >>> "0" * 7
> > => "0000000"
>
> Thanks, i am using this at the moment, just wanted to know if there is
> something faster - in Python zfill is faster than "0" * 7. I am just
> asking because i am using this a *lot* of times, so if there is an at
> least slightly faster alternative ,i should probably consider it. But if
> "0"*7 is the 'normal' way of doing this, it's OK with me.

It looks like zfill is primarily used for padding numbers, in which
case I'd use sprintf:

sprintf("%07d", 6)  or "%07d" % 6
=> "0000006"

Not sure how well it benchmarks - probably better if it maps to the C
sprintf function. But you're just looking for zeros without padding an
existing number? You could always pad out 0 to one less then what you
want, but I guess that would be overcomplicating things even if it was
a little faster. :)

-Pawel