#!/usr/bin/env perl use 5.010; use warnings; use strict; my $max_width = 60; my $scale = '1.......10........20........30........40........50........60'; my $long_string = q{The quick brown fox jumps over the dog}; my $pat = "%.2f %d/%d/%d %-*s"; my @aoa = ( [ qw/79.3 2022 1 8 /], [ qw/394571 22 10 81 /], [ qw/123456.78 12345 123 1234/], ); say $scale; for my $aref (@aoa) { my $str = sprintf $pat, @$aref, $max_width, $long_string; print substr($str, 0, $max_width - 1), "|\n"; }