Right justifying text in a template field

olecs has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Hello all,
say I have the following template and code - (note that the code is just for illustration, it might not run):

  $TEMP = "\@0 A1 \@1 A12";
  $string = "AAAA";
  $res = pack($TEMP, "V", $string);
  print "$res\n";
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Now, when printing $res AAAA will be left justified and followed by 8 blanks - is it possible to make it right justified using the template mechanism? I could of course resort to using printf instead, but for my current purpose templates feel so right

rgds,
Ole C.

Update
As ikegami suggested I will use sprintf inside the pack statement to format the text the way it needs to be, something like:

  pack($TEMP, "V", sprintf("%12s", "$string"));
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takes care of it. The reason for using pack in the first place is that I have to create very long lines with different data and a very rigid structure for where the data should be. pack makes it easy to ensure that everything comes in the right place.

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Re: Right justifying text in a template field by ikegami (Patriarch) on Dec 14, 2005 at 14:46 UTC
`pack` is meant for creating C `struct`s, not for formatting. Try `printf`/`sprintf`: `$formatted = sprintf('%5s', 'abc'); # ' abc' $formatted = sprintf('%-5s', 'abc'); # 'abc '` [download] You could always `pack` what `sprintf` returns, if you need `pack`.	[reply] [d/l] [select]