Answer by Federico klez Culloca for Printf in Java with variable spaces before the output

The format string is still a string, so assuming a width variable System.out.printf("%" + width +"d", x); does the trick.

So for example

var width = 10; var x = 123;System.out.printf("%" + width +"d", x);

prints 123 (7 leading spaces + 3 digits = 10), while

var width = 3; var x = 123;System.out.printf("%" + width +"d", x);

prints 123