Hello Monks,

I was wondering if it is possible to use a variable in a printf statement in the "format string"? And if not is there a workaround to do this?

For example, I'm printing out a set of data in the form of a table. Each line either has 10 to 11 columns. I was using this to print the data to my file:

printf OUTDATA "%-12s ", $AoA[$x][$y];
Which as you all know prints columns at a width of 12. So I'm wondering if it is possible to replace the '12' with a variable? Like this: 

#Variable would be --> $varLength

printf OUTDATA "%-$varLengths ", $AoA[$x][$y];

[download]



Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. I want to do this because the columns could have anywhere from 1 char to about 12 chars long, and having a column of length 12 for a string that is only 1 character doesn't look very good when the data is stretched across the screen.


Thanks in Advance,
Matt


In reply to Possible to use variable in printf statement? by mmartin

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