Actually, I think I like this one better than either choroba's or mine above:

c:\@Work\Perl\monks>perl -wMstrict -le
"my @names = qw(A AB ABC ABCD ABCDE);
 ;;
 for my $name (@names) {
   printf qq{%8s -> }, qq{'$name'};
   my $s =
     sprintf length($name) > 3 ? '%s' : ' %-3s', $name
     ;
   print qq{'$s'};
   }
"
     'A' -> ' A  '
    'AB' -> ' AB '
   'ABC' -> ' ABC'
  'ABCD' -> 'ABCD'
 'ABCDE' -> 'ABCDE'
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Make the first  '%s' into  '%4.4s' to limit the field to the first four characters only.