I have been able to underline the column headings using Term::ANSIColor but I am not satisfied with the result. There can be twenty six columns depending on the data, so I want to keep my output width to a minimum. The column header consists of one or two digits (the count of the letter) followed by the letter followed by one or two digits called flank in the code (the count of how many times the letter contacts a different letter). The headers vary in width from five to three characters. The line (32) in question is: push @line, sprintf('%2d%s%-2d', scalar @{$trigraphs{$k}}, $k, scalar keys %{$flanks{$k}}); When I use colored in the format portion of sprintf(), like this: sprintf(colored('%2d%s%-2d', 'underline'), I always get an underline that is five characters wide, which is good when my column header is five characters wide; not so good when the header is only three characters wide. I was forced to go that route because even though I got the correct results with the letter part of the header, like this: colored($k, 'underline'), I was unable to get around the fact that I couldn’t use the %d identifier when I tried to underline what I thought would be numerical values from the scalar part of my code (it still sees $k as letters). If I changed %d to %s and used: 
colored(scalar @{$trigraphs{$k}}, 'underline'), and
colored(scalar keys %{$flanks{$k}}, 'underline'));
Note: the last ) is to match the ( in sprintf().

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I could get the underline I want, but the headers no longer lined up with the letter above it’s corresponding letter in the columns. The columns print as they should with three spaces between them. That is my problem, can anyone help? Should anyone want to run the code 
#! /usr/bin/perl

use strict;
use warnings;
use Term::ANSIColor;

# get cipherText
my $txt = do{local $/; <DATA>};
$txt =~ s/\s//go;
my @letters = split '', $txt;

# create trigraphs
my (%trigraphs, %flanks);
add_trigraph('-', @letters[0..1]);
while(@letters > 2){
        add_trigraph(@letters[0..2]);
        shift @letters;
}
add_trigraph(@letters[0..1], '-');

# sort by most seen middle character
my @sorted_keys = sort{
        @{$trigraphs{$b}} <=> @{$trigraphs{$a}} || $a cmp $b
} keys %trigraphs;

# create columns/lines
for(my $i = -1;$i < @{$trigraphs{$sorted_keys[0]}};++$i){
        my @line;
        for my $k (@sorted_keys){
                unless($i > -1){ # create header
                        @{$trigraphs{$k}} = sort @{$trigraphs{$k}};
                        push @line, sprintf('%2d%s%-2d', scalar @{$tri
+graphs{$k}}, $k, scalar keys %{$flanks{$k}});
                        next;
                }
                next unless defined $trigraphs{$k}->[$i];
                push @line, sprintf(' %s ', $trigraphs{$k}->[$i]);
        }
        print "@line\n";
}

sub add_trigraph {
    ++$flanks{$_[1]}->{$_} for @_[0,2];
    push(@{$trigraphs{$_[1]}}, join('', @_));
}

__DATA__        # elcy pg.73 in P format
FDRJN UHVXX URDMD SKVSO PJRKZ DYFZJ
XGSRR VTQYR WDARW DFVRK VDRKV TDFSZ
ZDYFR DNNVO VTSXS AWVZR

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In reply to Re^2: underline variable width column headings by wlegrand
in thread underline variable width column headings by wlegrand

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