Utility code to DataSet/DataReader table to console in Tabular format, table dimensions set at runtime.

Question

Hello,

I am essentially trying to replicate the same features as SQL Management Studio's Results To Text, to prettify my DataSet/DataReader object into a string based table.

I am looking for a free (GNU or BSD/MIT licensed or equivalent) utility code if existing which will let me print out data in a tabular format. I am appending to a string so it's just plain string mainpulation.

Thing is,

1. I will know the number of Columns and Rows at runtime, and the # of columns will be constant at runtime. (ie SqlDataReader's FieldCount property)

2. Data contained in these rows can vary quite a bit and can contain stuff like /r/n and /t and Varchar(MAX) which wrecks using formatting techniques such as String.Format("{0, -1*PADDING}", strValue)

3. All of my data comes in as strings so there's not much conversion that I have to do, just need to put things in the right place in the right order.

I don't really know where to start Googling, are there libraries already built out there for this? I'm sure this sort of stuff is used everywhere in GNU/Linux and Unix commandline, any ideas of where I should start looking?

Thanks, Kai.