How to fill dots between two texts?(dots aligned at the center of the text)

Question

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{enumitem}
\begin{document}

\begin{enumerate}[align=parleft]
  \item[2.1] An example \dotfill 21
  \item[2.2] A longer example like this such that the line wraps down to the next line and the last entry gets wrapped to the next line \dotfill 22
  \item[2.31] Another example \dotfill 132
\end{enumerate}

\end{document}

I use '\dotfill', but the dots are aligned at the bottom of the text.

Answer 1

I use a \cdotfill command for this:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{enumitem}
\makeatletter
\newcommand\cdotfill{%
    \leavevmode\cleaders\hb@[email protected]{\hss$\cdot$\hss}\hfill\kern\z@
}
\makeatother
\begin{document}
\begin{enumerate}[align=parleft]
  \item[2.1] An example \cdotfill 21
  \item[2.2] A longer example like this such that the line wraps down to the next line and the last entry gets wrapped to the next line \ddotfill 22
  \item[2.31] Another example \ddotfill 132
\end{enumerate}

\end{document}

Output:

Is this what you want?

Edit: To explain the command a bit, so you can play around with it:

• \leavevmode ensures that horizontal mode is enabled, so it doesn't stack boxes vertically ("leave vertical mode")
• \cleaders indicates that the following statement will be repeated until a certain skip is reached
• \hb@xt@ is an TeX primitive abbreviation for \hbox to and defines a horizontal box of the given length (in this case .44em)
• {\hss$\cdot$\hss} is the object inside the hbox, where \hss is a horizontal space that can take any length
• \hfill is the second argument of \cleaders. It says "fill the entire left space" and since it is used in the context of \cleaders, the entire left space is repeatedly filled with the box.
• \kern\z@ determines the space added before the number, where \z@ is a TeX primitive for 0pt (so currently no space is added and \kern just means horizontal space of fixed width.

Answer 2

Building on Jaytar’s fine answer, you may want to avoid line breaks at the right margin.

However, all leader dots I've seen are on the baseline. With this macro based approach, you can change the leaders by just changing the definition of \toclikeentry.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{enumitem}
\usepackage{etoolbox}

\usepackage{showframe} % just for the example

\let\cdotfill\dotfill
\patchcmd{\cdotfill}
  {\hss.\hss}
  {\hss\textperiodcentered\hss}
  {}{}
\newcommand{\changerightskip}{%
  \setlength{\rightskip}{3em}%
  \setlength{\parfillskip}{-3em}%
}
\newlist{toclikeI}{enumerate}{1}
\setlist[toclikeI]{align=parleft}
\newenvironment{toclike}{\toclikeI\changerightskip}{\endtoclikeI}
\newcommand{\toclikeentry}[3]{\item[#1]#2\cdotfill#3}

\begin{document}

\begin{toclike}%\changerightskip

\toclikeentry{2.1}{An example}{21}

\toclikeentry{2.2}{%
  A longer example like this such that the line
  wraps down to the next line and the last entry
  gets wrapped to the next line}{22}

\toclikeentry{2.31}{Another example}{132}

\end{toclike}

\end{document}