After much unsucessful searching for a function/method to print a list in a format similar to the output of the unix 'dir' command, I've written this small script.
It turns, @array = qw/one two three four five six seven eight nine ten/
Into,
one   two   three
four  five  six  
seven eight nine 
ten

[download]
I think the way I've done it must be quite inefficient, as it itterates through the entire array 3 times - firstly to get the max single length of the array entries - secondly to pad out shorter entries with space, up to the max length, thirdly to print it all out.
Can anyone offer me improvements, or suggest alternative ways of approaching this?
use strict;

my @array = qw/one two three four five six seven eight nine ten/;
my $cols = 3;

my $max = 0;

foreach (@array) {
  if (length >= $max) {
    $max = length $_;
  }
}

foreach (@array) {
  my $length = length $_;
  if ($length < $max) {
    $_ .= (' ' x ($max - $length));
  }
}

while (@array) {
  unless (scalar @array >= $cols) {
    $cols = scalar @array;
  }
  print join(' ', splice(@array, 0, $cols) ), $/;
}

[download]
My array will always be pre-sorted alphabetically.
This script doesn't print the list alphabetically down-ways, but I don't really need that anyway.

The array will actually be populated from searches on the 'linux.words' file, so it may contain many indices.
Thanks,
Carl

In reply to Printing an array in columns - improvements? by fireartist

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