perl_seeker:

You should read the documentation for printf/sprintf. It's unreasonable for you to expect that it will magically interpolate the variables into their values for the desired width. You need to tell it the width you want. For example:

printf "%-15.15s  % 4d\n", $string, $integer;
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This code tells printf to format the $string variable into a 15 character column, left justifying it (and truncating it if it's too long. It formats $integer into a 4 character field, filling with spaces.

...roboticus

Update: Cleaned up the formatting. (Thanks, moritz!)