bash: echo something to right end of window (right aligned)

Question

I am looking for producing success/fail messages which are right aligned in bash. An example would be what apache2 produces on executing: sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 relo

Answer 1

Here is something mostly based on the centos 'functions' script, but more stripped down

#!/bin/bash

RES_COL=60
MOVE_TO_COL="printf \\033[${RES_COL}G"

DULL=0
BRIGHT=1

FG_BLACK=30
FG_RED=31
FG_GREEN=32
FG_YELLOW=33
FG_BLUE=34
FG_MAGENTA=35
FG_CYAN=36
FG_WHITE=37

ESC="^[["
NORMAL="${ESC}m"
RESET="${ESC}${DULL};${FG_WHITE};${BG_NULL}m"

BLACK="${ESC}${DULL};${FG_BLACK}m"
RED="${ESC}${DULL};${FG_RED}m"
GREEN="${ESC}${DULL};${FG_GREEN}m"
YELLOW="${ESC}${DULL};${FG_YELLOW}m"
BLUE="${ESC}${DULL};${FG_BLUE}m"
MAGENTA="${ESC}${DULL};${FG_MAGENTA}m"
CYAN="${ESC}${DULL};${FG_CYAN}m"
WHITE="${ESC}${DULL};${FG_WHITE}m"

SETCOLOR_SUCCESS=$GREEN
SETCOLOR_FAILURE=$RED
SETCOLOR_NORMAL=$RESET

echo_success() {
  $MOVE_TO_COL
  printf "["
  printf $SETCOLOR_SUCCESS
  printf $"  OK  "
  printf $SETCOLOR_NORMAL
  printf "]"
  printf "\r"
  return 0
}

echo_failure() {
  $MOVE_TO_COL
  printf "["
  printf $SETCOLOR_FAILURE
  printf $"FAILED"
  printf $SETCOLOR_NORMAL
  printf "]"
  printf "\r"
  return 1
}

action() {
  local STRING rc

  STRING=$1
  printf "$STRING "
  shift
  "$@" && echo_success $"$STRING" || echo_failure $"$STRING"
  rc=$?
  echo
  return $rc
}

action testing true
action testing false

Answer 2

#!/bin/bash

RED=$(tput setaf 1)
GREEN=$(tput setaf 2)
NORMAL=$(tput sgr0)

col=80 # change this to whatever column you want the output to start at

if <some condition here>; then
  printf '%s%*s%s' "$GREEN" $col "[OK]" "$NORMAL"
else
  printf '%s%*s%s' "$RED" $col "[FAIL]" "$NORMAL"
fi

Answer 3

Have a look at this thread, might be interesting : how to write a bash script like the ones used in init.d?

On Linux CentOS 6.5, i'm using the /etc/init.d/functions file:

#!/bin/bash
. /etc/init.d/functions # include the said file

action "Description of the action" command

exit 0

assuming command returns 0 on success, positive value if an error occurs. To let the script be easy to read, i use a function call instead of the whole command.

Here is an example:

#!/bin/bash

. /etc/init.d/functions

this_will_fail()
{
    # Do some operations...
    return 1
}

this_will_succeed()
{
    # Do other operations...
    return 0
}


action "This will fail"     this_will_fail
action "This will succeed"  this_will_succeed

exit 0

resulting in: (note : french locale ;-) )

Hope it'll help !