and what should I be writing?

Probably something like this: 

    printf "%-5d hello\n", 1;

[download]

The folowing formats may also be suitable: %5d, %05d, %5.5f. The format in your example, %5.5d, isn't probably what you want.

--
John.

In reply to Re: sprintf minor problem by jmcnamara
in thread sprintf minor problem by Melly

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