I've got this from Grok AI since it's been long since I wrote that code:

%-*s in print("%-*s" % (width, "text")) is a format specifier where:
   * means the width of the field is given by the first argument in the tuple (width in this case).
   - means left-align the text within that width.
   s means it's formatting a string.```

The format() replacement would look like print("{:<{}}".format("text", width)).

{:<{}} means:
  < aligns the text to the left.
  {} specifies the field width.```

I checked on my own using https://pyformat.info/ and found a solution that looks a bit better