Yes, that makes sense now. I actually counted the "1s" and they are 78 - as many as my columns, so now I see how printf also returned "true". Indeed, sprintf does the trick. Thanks for the explanation, I would have never thought that the problem was with printf.

Now I know 2-3 different ways to count columns, the difference between printf and sprintf and also next if/unless :) Although I still haven't tried map, which I will do next. Thank you all!