How can I align the columns of tables in Bash?

Question

I\'d like to output a table format text. What I tried to do was echo the elements of an array with \'\\t\', but it was misaligned.

My code

for((i=0;i         


        

Answer 1

printf is great, but people forget about it.

$ for num in 1 10 100 1000 10000 100000 1000000; do printf "%10s %s\n" $num "foobar"; done
         1 foobar
        10 foobar
       100 foobar
      1000 foobar
     10000 foobar
    100000 foobar
   1000000 foobar

$ for((i=0;i<array_size;i++));
do
    printf "%10s %10d %10s" stringarray[$i] numberarray[$i] anotherfieldarray[%i]
done

Notice I used %10s for strings. %s is the important part. It tells it to use a string. The 10 in the middle says how many columns it is to be. %d is for numerics (digits).

man 1 printf for more info.

Answer 2

Below code has been tested and does exactly what is requested in the original question.

Parameters: %30s Column of 30 char and text right align. %10d integer notation, %10s will also work. Added clarification included on code comments.

stringarray[0]="a very long string.........."
# 28Char (max length for this column)
numberarray[0]=1122324333
# 10digits (max length for this column)
anotherfield[0]="anotherfield"
# 12Char (max length for this column)
stringarray[1]="a smaller string....."
numberarray[1]=123124343
anotherfield[1]="anotherfield"

printf "%30s %10d %13s" "${stringarray[0]}" ${numberarray[0]} "${anotherfield[0]}"
printf "\n"
printf "%30s %10d %13s" "${stringarray[1]}" ${numberarray[1]} "${anotherfield[1]}"
# a var string with spaces has to be quoted
printf "\n Next line will fail \n"      
printf "%30s %10d %13s" ${stringarray[0]} ${numberarray[0]} "${anotherfield[0]}"



  a very long string.......... 1122324333  anotherfield
         a smaller string.....  123124343  anotherfield

Answer 3

awk solution that deals with stdin

Since column is not POSIX, maybe this is:

mycolumn() (
  file="${1:--}"
  if [ "$file" = - ]; then
    file="$(mktemp)"
    cat > "${file}"
  fi
  awk '
  FNR == 1 { if (NR == FNR) next }
  NR == FNR {
    for (i = 1; i <= NF; i++) {
      l = length($i)
      if (w[i] < l)
        w[i] = l
    }
    next
  }
  {
    for (i = 1; i <= NF; i++)
      printf "%*s", w[i] + (i > 1 ? 1 : 0), $i
    print ""
  }
  ' "$file" "$file"
  if [ "$1" = - ]; then
    rm "$file"
  fi
)

Test:

printf '12 1234 1
12345678 1 123
1234 123456 123456
' > file

Test commands:

mycolumn file
mycolumn <file
mycolumn - <file

Output for all:

      12   1234      1
12345678      1    123
    1234 123456 123456

See also:

• Using awk to align columns in text file?
• AWK: go through the file twice, doing different tasks

Answer 4

Just in case someone wants to do that in PHP I posted a gist on Github

https://gist.github.com/redestructa/2a7691e7f3ae69ec5161220c99e2d1b3

simply call:

$output = $tablePrinter->printLinesIntoArray($items, ['title', 'chilProp2']);

you may need to adapt the code if you are using a php version older than 7.2

after that call echo or writeLine depending on your environment.

Answer 5

It's easier than you wonder.

If you are working with a separated by semicolon file and header too:

$ (head -n1 file.csv && sort file.csv | grep -v <header>) | column -s";" -t

If you are working with array (using tab as separator):

for((i=0;i<array_size;i++));
do

   echo stringarray[$i] $'\t' numberarray[$i] $'\t' anotherfieldarray[$i] >> tmp_file.csv

done;

cat file.csv | column -t

Answer 6

To have the exact same output as you need, you need to format the file like that :

a very long string..........\t     112232432\t     anotherfield\n
a smaller string\t      123124343\t     anotherfield\n

And then using :

$ column -t -s $'\t' FILE
a very long string..........  112232432  anotherfield
a smaller string              123124343  anotherfield