Java output formatting for Strings

Solution 1:

System.out.println(String.format("%-20s= %s" , "label", "content" ));

Where %s is a placeholder for you string.
The '-' makes the result left-justified.
20 is the width of the first string

The output looks like this:

label               = content

As a reference I recommend Javadoc on formatter syntax

Solution 2:

If you want a minimum of 4 characters, for instance,

System.out.println(String.format("%4d", 5));
// Results in "   5", minimum of 4 characters

Solution 3:

To answer your updated question you can do

String[] lines = ("Name =              Bob\n" +
        "Age =               27\n" +
        "Occupation =        Student\n" +
        "Status =            Single").split("\n");

for (String line : lines) {
    String[] parts = line.split(" = +");
    System.out.printf("%-19s %s%n", parts[0] + " =", parts[1]);
}

prints

Name =              Bob
Age =               27
Occupation =        Student
Status =            Single

Solution 4:

EDIT: This is an extremely primitive answer but I can't delete it because it was accepted. See the answers below for a better solution though

Why not just generate a whitespace string dynamically to insert into the statement.

So if you want them all to start on the 50th character...

String key = "Name =";
String space = "";
for(int i; i<(50-key.length); i++)
{space = space + " ";}
String value = "Bob\n";
System.out.println(key+space+value);

Put all of that in a loop and initialize/set the "key" and "value" variables before each iteration and you're golden. I would also use the StringBuilder class too which is more efficient.