In the good old days when everyone read emails using a text-based client, then you could rely on a fixed width font and you'd just insert the appropriate number of spaces. These days, however, people insist on variable width fonts which break these kinds of layouts.

Can you not attach a text file containing the table? Or use (*spit*) HTML mail and put the table within <pre> tags?

Didn't merlyn write an article for TPJ discussing the use of formats to make data look the way you want it to look?

Look into formats. They may be old, but they are still handy.

Learning Perl has a good example of it:

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
while (my $filename = <*.secret>) {
     open(WORDSLIST, $filename);
     if (-M WORDSLIST < 7) {
          while (my $name = <WORDSLIST>) {
               chop($name);
               my $word = <WORDSLIST>;
               chop($word);
               write; # invoke format STDOUT to STDOUT
          }
     }
}

format STDOUT =
@<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< @<<<<<<<<<< @<<<<<<<<<<
$filename, $name, $word
.

format STDOUT_TOP =
Page @<<
$%

Filename         Name        Word
================ =========== ===========
.
[download]

I hope this helps.

J. J. Horner
Linux, Perl, Apache, Stronghold, Unix
jhorner@knoxlug.org http://www.knoxlug.org/

I didn't do an article for TPJ, but one of my early WebTechniques columns talked about having tabular data spit out as a table for table browsers and text for text browsers. I later rejected the error of my ways though, so I don't recommend that information any more.

-- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker

Yes it is.
________________________________________________
\          +------------------------+          /
\          |     TABLE HEADING      |          /
\          .------------------------.          /
\          |   TABLE CONTENT        |          /
\          |                        |          /
\          |                        |          /
\          +------------------------+          /
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 ______________________________________________
|_____¸.·ooO--(> cRaZy is co01. <)--Ooo·.¸_____|
 ŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻ
[download]