Alternatively you could generate the whole string then truncate it for printing:

#!/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"; }

Prints:

1.......10........20........30........40........50........60 79.30 2022/1/8 The quick brown fox jumps over the dog | 394571.00 22/10/81 The quick brown fox jumps over the dog | 123456.78 12345/123/1234 The quick brown fox jumps over th|
Optimising for fewest key strokes only makes sense transmitting to Pluto or beyond

In reply to Re: How to use sprintf %n formatting pattern by GrandFather
in thread How to use sprintf %n formatting pattern by ibm1620

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":



  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.