How can we communicate how leading zeros work for a number generator?

In the project controls software I am working on, uses needs to generate unique codes before exporting scheduling data to dedicated scheduling software. Part of this code will be an ascending number.

It is a requirement to support leading zeros. This means that zeros will be prefixed to a number when it is below a certain amount of digits. This way, your numbers will always have roughly the same width. Instead of:

• 10
• 100
• 1000

You will see

• 0010
• 0100
• 1000

The current solution is to have the user enter a numeric value in a text field labeled 'minimum width'. This is a technical term, and I assume it is unclear what the effect of this value is without trial and error. I cannot find specific examples of how to make this feature clear to the user. How would I do this?

Thanks in advance.