padStart | Itential

The padStart task pads a current string with a specified string (repeated, if needed) so that the resulting string reaches a given length. The padding is applied at the start of the current string.

Potential use case

Suppose you have a dataset of a known length and you would like to repeat that dataset at the beginning of the current dataset. You could use the padStart task to specify the numeric length and variables needed to pad the start of the original dataset.

Properties

Incoming	Type	Description
`str`	String	Required. The string to pad.
`targetLength`	Number	The length of the resulting string after it has been padded. If the value is less than the original `str` length, then the original string is returned.
`padString`	String	Required. The specified string to pad to the start of the original string.

Outgoing	Type	Description
`paddedString`	String	A string that has been padded at the beginning with a specified string to the desired length.

Example

In this example:

The str variable is “Hello World” and the current length of the string is 11 characters, including the space.
The new targetLength has been set to 14, and the padString variable of “123” is applied at the start of the current string so that it reaches the desired targetLength of 14 characters.

padStart task configured with str Hello World, targetLength 14, and padString 123

The expected result is “123Hello World”. Notice that the beginning of the word string for “Hello World” has been padded with “123” in order to fulfill the specified targetLength.