Zero padding number generator
A negative number is padded after its minus sign (-7 → -007, not 00-7). A value already longer than the requested width is left alone rather than truncated, since shortening a number would silently change it.
Why leading zeros matter
A file named image9.png sorts after image10.png and image100.png in most file browsers and spreadsheets, because those tools sort text character by character, not by numeric value - "1" comes before "9" as a character regardless of what follows it. Padding to image009.png, image010.png, image100.png fixes this by making every filename the same length, so character-by-character sorting happens to also be numeric sorting.
What it does
Enter a single number or paste a whole list (one per line), set the total width, and every value is padded with leading zeros to that width - 7 becomes 007, 42 becomes 042, at a width of 3. A negative number is padded after its minus sign (-7 becomes -007, not 00-7), and a value already longer than the requested width is left alone rather than truncated, since shortening a number would silently change it.
Where this is used
Invoice and order numbering, file sequence naming, ID and account number formatting, and any export destined for a system that sorts or compares these values as plain text rather than as numbers.
Related tools
See the number to words converter and the number base converter for other number-formatting jobs.
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