For complicated formatting, or for formats that change at runtime, using pictures may not be flexible enough for your needs. In such cases, you can achieve additional flexibility by directly setting attributes of a formatter object. For example, you can fill in the space between a currency symbol at the far left and the number with stars instead of spaces by using code like this:

RWDecimal<RWMP1Int> amount = "45.94"; RWDecimalFormat format("$________.__"); format.setLeftFillChar('*'); cout << format(amount);// prints $******45.94