To the best of my knowledge, printf (and sprintf) will never truncate a field that is too long for the width specified in the format string

s?printf does what you tell it  printf "%1.1s$/", 'foy'; yields 'f',  printf "%s$/", 'foy'; yields 'foy'.

• Tutorials
  • Using (s)printf()

As for Limbic~Regions note, you can't convert variable width "records" to fixed width ones without possibly undergoing some truncation ;)

MJD says you can't just make shit up and expect the computer to know what you mean, retardo! I run a Win32 PPM repository for perl 5.6x+5.8x. I take requests. ** The Third rule of perl club is a statement of fact: pod is sexy.