I'm not sure this is in any sense "simpler" (it certainly burns a lot more computrons than just checking the length and selecting a format string conditionally), but: 

c:\@Work\Perl\monks>perl -wMstrict -le
"my @names = qw(A AB ABC ABCD);
 ;;
 for my $name (@names) {
   my $s = sprintf '%4s', sprintf '%-3s', $name;
   print qq{'$s'};
   }
"
' A  '
' AB '
' ABC'
'ABCD'

[download]
See sprintf for format specifiers.

Give a man a fish:  <%-(-(-(-<

In reply to Re: conditional string formatting by AnomalousMonk
in thread conditional string formatting by docdurdee

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