perl leading zeros formatting sprintf

To format a number with leading zeros in Perl using the sprintf function, you can use the %0Nd format specifier, where N is the total width of the number. Here's an example:

my $number = 42;
my $formatted_number = sprintf("%05d", $number);
print $formatted_number;  # Output: 00042

In this example, %05d specifies that the number should be printed with a total width of 5 digits, padded with leading zeros if necessary.

You can adjust the width by changing the number after the %0 in the format specifier. For example, %08d will produce a number with a width of 8 digits:

my $number = 42;
my $formatted_number = sprintf("%08d", $number);
print $formatted_number;  # Output: 00000042

This will pad the number with 6 leading zeros to make it 8 digits wide.