JS - Separating a string with periods to meet certain character length

Question

I'm trying to find a way to separate two words with periods to match a certain character length in Javascript. For example, say I made a function where my desired length is 20 characters and entered 'Dapper' and 'Donald'. I need to find a way to pad out the string and get a result of 'Dapper........Donald'. I'm pretty lost, so I appreciate any help.

Answer 1

This should do it. Although it won't handle when the string is longer than 20 characters

function pad(one, two){
    var dots = "";
    while((one + dots + two).length < 20){
        dots += ".";
    } 
    return (one + dots + two);
}

alert(pad("Dapper","Donald"));

Answer 2

You can calculate how many dots you need, and get those from a longer string using substr:

function padMiddle(word1, word2, len) {
  var dots = len - word1.length + word2.length;
  return word1 + '....................'.substr(0, dots) + word2;
}

Usage:

var padded = padMiddle('Dapper', 'Donald', 20);

---

To make it work for any length you could create a string by repeating the same character a number of times. See Repeat Character N Times

Answer 3

This will work:

function pad(str1, str2, maxlength) {
    var lengthOf2str = str1.length + str2.length,
    dots,
    result;
    if (maxlength > lengthOf2str) {
        dots = new Array(maxlength - lengthOf2str + 1).join('.');
        result = str1 + dots + str2;
    } else {
        result = str1 + str2;
    }    
    return result;
}

alert(pad('Dapper', 'Donald', 20));