Dearest Monks, I have an annoying string formatting issue for atom names in protein databank file. The names can be 1-4 characters long and should print as follows (using metacharacters): 
'\s\w\s\s'
'\s\w\w\s'
'\s\w\w\w'
'\w\w\w\w'

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Clearly, I can test the length of the string and then use " %-3s" or "%4s" accordingly. Is something simpler possible?

In reply to conditional string formatting by docdurdee

Title:
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