NAME

left-bad – pads strings on the left – the foundation of the modern internet

SYNOPSIS

const leftBad = require("left-bad");

leftBad(str, len, ch = " ");

DESCRIPTION

left-bad pads a string on the left until it reaches the requested length. That's it. It can't do more, it isn't supposed to do more – and yet without left-bad, a significant part of the internet would grind to a halt.

The source code is eleven lines long. 2.3 million packages depend on it, including four compilers, every online bank, the firmware of a space probe and npm itself.

left-bad itself has 1,284 dependencies. The most important one is is-space, a package that checks whether a character is a space. is-space depends on is-not-space, which in turn uses is-space. Nobody knows how that works. It works.

Since 2017, JavaScript can do this on its own with String.prototype.padStart(). left-bad is still installed 40 million times a week. Out of tradition. And because nobody dares to remove it.

PARAMETERS

str

The string to pad. Numbers are converted; objects are padded as "[object Object]", which looks very professional in log files.

len

The desired total length. Negative values pad on the right. That is a bug that three banks now rely on. It will therefore never be fixed.

ch

The padding character, a space by default. Multiple characters are allowed and produce art.

EXAMPLES

leftBad("42", 5);          // "   42"
leftBad("42", 5, "0");     // "00042"
leftBad("42", 8, "ab");    // "ababab42"
leftBad({}, 20);           // "     [object Object]"
leftBad("42", -5);         // "42   "   do not touch, see above

Install it:

$ npm install left-bad
added 1284 packages, and audited 1285 packages in 4m

312 packages are looking for funding
  run `npm fund` for details

47 vulnerabilities (12 moderate, 31 high, 4 critical)
$ du -sh node_modules
340M    node_modules
$ wc -l node_modules/left-bad/index.js
11 node_modules/left-bad/index.js

Remove it:

$ npm unpublish left-bad
npm WARN 2,318,044 packages just stopped working.
npm WARN Including: npm.
npm ERR! npm could not be started.

HISTORY

1.0.0

Initial release.

1.0.1

Fixed a bug with spaces.

1.0.2

Fixed a bug introduced by the fix in 1.0.1.

1.0.4

Added TypeScript types. Package size tripled.

1.0.5

Reverted 1.0.4. Package size still doubled.

1.0.6 to 1.0.9

Updated dependencies. No code changes. 900 new dependencies.

1.0.10

Maintainer unpublished the package after an argument. Internet down for two and a half hours.

1.0.11

Back, after calls from three governments and one grandmother.

BUGS

left-bad is maintained by a single person who was last seen in the spring of

1. Their status on the developer platform has read "went out for milk" ever since.

SEE ALSO

begs(3), maybealloc(3), right-bad(3), is-even-ish(3)