I'm looking for some code that does the same sort of formatting done by the Unix 'ls' command, which looks something like this:

B           Digest      Filter     MIME       SDBM_File  Time     util
ByteLoader  DynaLoader  GDBM_File  NDBM_File  Safe       Unicode
Cwd         Encode      I18N       ODBM_File  Socket     XS
DB_File     Errno       IO         Opcode     Storable   attrs
Data        Fcntl       IPC        POSIX      Sys        re
Devel       File        List       PerlIO     Thread     threads

[download]

The salient features are a) to read entries in sorted order you read down one column before moving over to the next; b) columns are left-justified; c) columns are as wide as they need to be to fit the largest entry within them; d) as many columns as possible are used; e) all but the last column have the same number of entries, and the last column has no more than the other columns.

This is intended for the list of available commands in a help system roughly modelled on gdb's. I haven't written any code to do this yet, because I imagine someone has already done so.

I did find one implementation (thanks ysth) in the implementataion of ls in the Perl Power Tools project, but that uses a more simplistic approach that makes all columns as wide as the widest column, rather than making each column only as wide as it needs to be.

Any suggestions gratefully received.

Hugo

In reply to 'ls -C' column style by hv

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