I don't think DecimalFormat can do what you want. Alternatives: (1) use format "0000.00" and put up with leading zeros, (2) put the values into some other GUI component which allows you to align them along the right side (I don't remember Swing well enough to tell you how to do this), (3) write your own method which will pad a
string with spaces on the left hand side to bring it up to a specified length, ot (4) use Cay Horstman's
Format.java to get a
Java equivalent of C's printf statement. Note that all options but #2 assume you're using a fixed-width font - otherwise text alignment is pretty hopeless.