Formatting toString in Java

Question

I have tried the String formatter in my toString to make my output look fine, Anyone knows how I can fix this, I'm a new user of formatter in Java.

I'm using this code to read data from a file in ".ser" format The code looks like this,

    public void printList(List<Person> list, File filepath) throws IOException, ClassNotFoundException {
          Person person = new Person();
        if (filepath.isFile()) {
            ObjectInputStream inputStream = new ObjectInputStream(new FileInputStream(filepath));
            list = (List<Person>) inputStream.readObject(); 
            inputStream.close();
            ListIterator iterator = list.listIterator();
            int count = 0;
            while (iterator.hasNext()) {

                System.out.println((count +1)+ ". " +iterator.next());
                count++;
            }
            if(count > 0){
                System.out.println("\nThere are : " +  count +"  persons.\n");
            }else {
                System.out.println("The list is empty....!\nTo add to list enter 1:");
            }
        }
    }

I'm using ObjectInputStream and OutPutstream for reading these data. My code works fine however the output I like to fix is in better shape.

public class Person extends Addresses implements Serializable {

    private String firstName = "";
    private String lastName = "";
    private String age= "";
    private double length;
    private String postAddress = "";
    private String postNumber = "";
    private String postArea = "";


    public Person() {
        this("", "", "", 0.0, "", "", "");
    }

    public Person(String firstName, String lastName, string age, double length, String postAddress, String postNumber, String postArea) {
        super(postAddress, postNumber, postArea);
        this.firstName = firstName;
        this.lastName = lastName;
        this.signature = age;
        this.length = length;

    }

@Override
    public String toString() {

        String header = String.format(java.util.Locale.US, "\t%5s  \t%1s %1s \t%10.2f",
                this.age, this.firstName, this.lastName,  this.length);
        return header;
}

No  Age         Name                   Length[M]
1.  12          John Doe           1.80
2.  32          Mona lisa                1.69
3.  50          Benjamin Franklin         1.75
4.  45          Robert Oppenheimer            1.82

The output I want is

No  Age         Name                        Length[M]
1.  12          John Doe                    1.80
2.  32          Mona lisa                   1.69
3.  50          Benjamin Franklin           1.75
4.  45          Robert Oppenheimer          1.82

Answer 1

solution 1: You can increase the string limit in such a way that all the resultant strings fits in the given limit so that uniform tab indentation will be there.

solution 2: you can limit the char limits like below so that always the string will be in given limit so proper indentation will be ther

 String result = String.format("|%.5s|", "Hello World");//  output -> |Hello|