Is it possible to use format strings to align NSStrings like numbers can be?

Question

I'm using NSLog() to print some tabular data consisting of an NSString and an associated integer.

Assume I know the length of the longest word.

Is there a way using format strings to get this kind of column alignment:

word:tree        rank:5  
word:frog        rank:3  
word:house       rank:2  
word:peppercorn  rank:2  
word:sword       rank:2  
word:antlion     rank:1  

The reason I'm asking about formatting strings is I'm hoping for a lightweight way to format my ghetto debugging output.

Here is what I tried:

NSString *word = @"tree";
NSUInteger rank = 4;
NSString *str = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"word:%-20@ rank:%u", word, rank];
NSLog(@"%@", str);

Result:

word:tree rank:4

No effect at all.

Answer 1

The following seems to work, but requires conversion from your NSString's to C-strings.

NSString *word = @"tree";
NSUInteger rank = 4;
NSString *str = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"word:%-20s rank:%u", [word UTF8String], rank];
NSLog(@"%@", str);

Don't know why the field width is being ignored when trying to use an NSString.