It seems that you're confusing two things that really don't have much in common.

* (field) width is a _number_, saying how many characters (at least) should the formatted output take.
* padding is a bool (or maybe a char), saying what should be put inside the leftover space if the default formatted output is shorter than the width

The padding is not the width, and the width is not the padding. Once you start to differentiate those two things, I'm convinced all your confusions will disappear.