Padding characters in printf

Question

I am writing a bash shell script to display if a process is running or not.

So far, I got this:

printf \"%-50s %s\\n\" $PROC_NAME [UP]

Answer 1

If you are ending the pad characters at some fixed column number, then you can overpad and cut to length:

# Previously defined:
# PROC_NAME
# PROC_STATUS

PAD="--------------------------------------------------"
LINE=$(printf "%s %s" "$PROC_NAME" "$PAD" | cut -c 1-${#PAD})
printf "%s %s\n" "$LINE" "$PROC_STATUS"

Answer 2

Simple Console Span/Fill/Pad/Padding with automatic scaling/resizing Method and Example.

function create-console-spanner() {
    # 1: left-side-text, 2: right-side-text
    local spanner="";
    eval printf -v spanner \'"%0.1s"\' "-"{1..$[$(tput cols)- 2 - ${#1} - ${#2}]}
    printf "%s %s %s" "$1" "$spanner" "$2";
}

Example: create-console-spanner "loading graphics module" "[success]"

Now here is a full-featured-color-character-terminal-suite that does everything in regards to printing a color and style formatted string with a spanner.

# Author: Triston J. Taylor <pc.wiz.tt@gmail.com>
# Date: Friday, October 19th, 2018
# License: OPEN-SOURCE/ANY (NO-PRODUCT-LIABILITY OR WARRANTIES)
# Title: paint.sh
# Description: color character terminal driver/controller/suite

declare -A PAINT=([none]=`tput sgr0` [bold]=`tput bold` [black]=`tput setaf 0` [red]=`tput setaf 1` [green]=`tput setaf 2` [yellow]=`tput setaf 3` [blue]=`tput setaf 4` [magenta]=`tput setaf 5` [cyan]=`tput setaf 6` [white]=`tput setaf 7`);

declare -i PAINT_ACTIVE=1;

function paint-replace() {
    local contents=$(cat)
    echo "${contents//$1/$2}"
}

source <(cat <<EOF
function paint-activate() {
    echo "\$@" | $(for k in ${!PAINT[@]}; do echo -n paint-replace \"\&$k\;\" \"\${PAINT[$k]}\" \|; done) cat;
}
EOF
)

source <(cat <<EOF
function paint-deactivate(){
    echo "\$@" | $(for k in ${!PAINT[@]}; do echo -n paint-replace \"\&$k\;\" \"\" \|; done) cat;    
}
EOF
)

function paint-get-spanner() {
    (( $# == 0 )) && set -- - 0;
    declare -i l=$(( `tput cols` - ${2}))
    eval printf \'"%0.1s"\' "${1:0:1}"{1..$l}
}

function paint-span() {
    local left_format=$1 right_format=$3
    local left_length=$(paint-format -l "$left_format") right_length=$(paint-format -l "$right_format")
    paint-format "$left_format";
    paint-get-spanner "$2" $(( left_length + right_length));
    paint-format "$right_format";
}

function paint-format() {
    local VAR="" OPTIONS='';
    local -i MODE=0 PRINT_FILE=0 PRINT_VAR=1 PRINT_SIZE=2;
    while [[ "${1:0:2}" =~ ^-[vl]$ ]]; do
        if [[ "$1" == "-v" ]]; then OPTIONS=" -v $2"; MODE=$PRINT_VAR; shift 2; continue; fi;
        if [[ "$1" == "-l" ]]; then OPTIONS=" -v VAR"; MODE=$PRINT_SIZE; shift 1; continue; fi;
    done;
    OPTIONS+=" --"
    local format="$1"; shift;
    if (( MODE != PRINT_SIZE && PAINT_ACTIVE )); then
        format=$(paint-activate "$format&none;")
    else
        format=$(paint-deactivate "$format")
    fi
    printf $OPTIONS "${format}" "$@";
    (( MODE == PRINT_SIZE )) && printf "%i\n" "${#VAR}" || true;
}

function paint-show-pallette() {
    local -i PAINT_ACTIVE=1
    paint-format "Normal: &red;red &green;green &blue;blue &magenta;magenta &yellow;yellow &cyan;cyan &white;white &black;black\n";
    paint-format "  Bold: &bold;&red;red &green;green &blue;blue &magenta;magenta &yellow;yellow &cyan;cyan &white;white &black;black\n";
}

To print a color, that's simple enough: paint-format "&red;This is %s\n" red And you might want to get bold later on: paint-format "&bold;%s!\n" WOW

The -l option to the paint-format function measures the text so you can do console font metrics operations.

The -v option to the paint-format function works the same as printf but cannot be supplied with -l

Now for the spanning!

paint-span "hello " . " &blue;world" [note: we didn't add newline terminal sequence, but the text fills the terminal, so the next line only appears to be a newline terminal sequence]

and the output of that is:

hello ............................. world

Answer 3

There's no way to pad with anything but spaces using printf. You can use sed:

printf "%-50s@%s\n" $PROC_NAME [UP] | sed -e 's/ /-/g' -e 's/@/ /' -e 's/-/ /'

Answer 4

This one is even simpler and execs no external commands.

$ PROC_NAME="JBoss"
$ PROC_STATUS="UP"
$ printf "%-.20s [%s]\n" "${PROC_NAME}................................" "$PROC_STATUS"

JBoss............... [UP]

Answer 5

Trivial (but working) solution:

echo -e "---------------------------- [UP]\r$PROC_NAME "

Answer 6

Simple but it does work:

printf "%-50s%s\n" "$PROC_NAME~" "~[$STATUS]" | tr ' ~' '- '

Example of usage:

while read PROC_NAME STATUS; do  
    printf "%-50s%s\n" "$PROC_NAME~" "~[$STATUS]" | tr ' ~' '- '
done << EOT 
JBoss DOWN
GlassFish UP
VeryLongProcessName UP
EOT

Output to stdout:

JBoss -------------------------------------------- [DOWN]
GlassFish ---------------------------------------- [UP]
VeryLongProcessName ------------------------------ [UP]