Printing with "\t" (tabs) does not result in aligned columns

Question

I have a very weird problem. After writing this:

for (File f : currentFile.listFiles()) {                 if  (f.isDirectory()){         System.out.println(f.getName()+"\t"+"Dir\t"+Command.getpremission(f)+"\t"+f.getTotalSpace());     }     else{         System.out.println(f.getName()+"\t"+"File\t"+Command.getpremission(f)+"\t"+f.getTotalSpace());     } 

I see this printed:

see.txt File    rw  267642728448 see1.txt    File    rw  267642728456 see2.txt    File    rw  267642728448 

Why is there a problem with the tabs?

Answer 1

Building on this question, I use the following code to indent my messages:

String prefix1 = "short text:"; String prefix2 = "looooooooooooooong text:"; String msg = "indented"; /* * The second string begins after 40 characters. The dash means that the * first string is left-justified. */ String format = "%-40s%s%n"; System.out.printf(format, prefix1, msg); System.out.printf(format, prefix2, msg); 

This is the output:

 short text:                             indented looooooooooooooong text:                indented 

This is documented in section "Flag characters" in man 3 printf.