i played a bit with it... (stupid ls replacement) 
#! /usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;

my $cols = $ENV{COLUMNS} || 80;
## you need to "export COLUMNS" for this to work..

my $dir = shift || '.';
opendir(DIR, $dir) || die "can't opendir $dir: $!";
my @words = grep { !/^\./ } readdir(DIR);
closedir DIR;

my $maxlength = 0;
for(@words) {
        my $leng = length($_);
        $maxlength = $leng if($leng > $maxlength);
}
my $numcols = int($cols / $maxlength);
my $rem = $cols % $maxlength;
$numcols-- if($rem < $numcols); #at least 1 space between columns..
my $colwidth = int($cols / $numcols);
for(my $i = 0; $i <= $#words; $i++) {
        printf("%-${colwidth}s", $words[$i]);
        print "\n" if((($i + 1) % $numcols) == 0);
}
print "\n";

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In reply to Re: Create table from a list of values? by cianoz
in thread Create table from a list of values? by Anonymous Monk

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