I have a specific issue with general console printing and I was wondering whether anyone has a solution for it. I am trying to print a dataTable which would look like sth like this: Table ---------------------- Name |Surname | ---------------------- Mike |Mikhailowish| Rafaello|Mirena | and so on. In order to print the border of the bar I need to know what the maximum length of each column value is. I don't want to go through the whole database to find that out and then again to print it. I would rather like to do sth like: System.out.printLater(s); //herejust leave a pointer to a StringBuilder you will build ... s.append("--------"); ... System.out.printAllDeferred(); I understand the above is probably in 99.99999% chances impossible, but perhaps you guys have a clever way of achieving the above?