Hello, I'm trying to run a query and then from the results get the length of the longest value in a particular column and then use that number to pad the other columns so that all columns are equal widths... I know there are other ways to do this, but I'm (obviously) new and I'd like to know how to do it without any additional modules.

I've tried quite a few things (which have all failed for one reason or another), so to save space/everyone's time I'll just include the working code of the query: 

use strict;
use warnings;

my $sth = $dbh->prepare($query);
$sth->execute();

my ($TICKET_ID,$PRIORITY,$ABSTRACT);

$sth->bind_columns(\($TICKET_ID,$ABSTRACT,$PRIORITY));

while (my $row = $sth->fetchrow_arrayref) {

    print "$TICKET_ID $ABSTRACT $PRIORITY \n";

}

[download]

So this returns something like: 

TICKET123 Server unpingable Medium
TICKET234 RPDU Audit Medium
TICKET345 Network down High
Ticket456 Check serial number Low
Ticket567 Critical server unpingable High

[download]

So I'd like to get the length of the longest abstract, then pad the others so they're all the same width, making it look more like: 

TICKET123 Server unpingable          Medium
TICKET234 RPDU audit                 Medium
TICKET345 Network down               High
Ticket456 Check serial number        Low
Ticket567 Critical server unpingable High

[download]

Any help is greatly appreciated.

In reply to Getting length of longest value in a column by Qukz

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