Quote Originally Posted by rmteo View Post
Storing spaces is extremely inefficient. Create a routine that pads the message with the appropriate number of leading/trailing spaces before sending it out to the LCD.
Of course, shipping product with unused memory is pretty inefficient too. If there's plenty of unused program store, why waste time improving efficiency, particularly for a code block that isn't very reusable?
To paraphrase old movies, "smoke 'em if you've got 'em, lads." But if things are tight, I agree completely.