Printf : How to repeat characters?

westrock2000 has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

I would like to use printf, but would also like to print a character multiple times. I cannot figure out the syntax

I have figured out you can do something like

printf ("%c" x 3,65,66,67);
[download]

Which will print ABC
But I what I would like to be able to do is something like AABBBCCCC

Normal print would just be as follows, but the commas throw me for a loop when it comes to printf.

$a = chr(65);
$b = chr(66);
$c = chr(67);
print ($a x 2, $b x 3, $c x 4);
[download]

Thanks

Comment on Printf : How to repeat characters? Select or Download Code

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Re: Printf : How to repeat characters? by eyepopslikeamosquito (Archbishop) on Oct 03, 2010 at 04:28 UTC
Does this do what you want? `my $a = chr(65); my $b = chr(66); my $c = chr(67); printf "%s" x 3, $a x 2, $b x 3, $c x 4;` [download] Update: or perhaps this? `printf "%c" x 9, (65) x 2, (66) x 3, (67) x 4;` [download] or even, using james2vegas' `"$"` idea, but with `%c` instead of `%s` `printf '%1$c'x2 . '%2$c'x3 . '%3$c'x4, 65, 66, 67;` [download] BTW, the above strange-looking POSIX extension positional parameter $ printf syntax was introduced in Perl 5.8 in 2002.	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^2: Printf : How to repeat characters? by westrock2000 (Beadle) on Oct 03, 2010 at 04:34 UTC
yep works perfect....the %s made all the difference :)	[reply]
Re: Printf : How to repeat characters? by james2vegas (Chaplain) on Oct 03, 2010 at 04:41 UTC
This also works, and doesn't require duplicating parameters passed to print / printf: `use strict; use warnings; my $a = chr(65); my $b = chr(66); my $c = chr(67); printf ('%1$s'x2 . '%2$s'x3 . '%3$s'x4, $a, $b, $c);` [download] The `%number$` modifier allows you to use a specific parameter passed to printf (see sprintf for more details), so we create a format string that prints the 1st parameter 2 times, the second parameter 3 times and the 3rd parameter 4 times, or `'%1$s%1$s%2$s%2$s%2$s%3$s%3$s%3$s%3$s'` though bear in mind if you use an interpolating string (`"..."` or `qq{...}`) you would likely need to escape the `$` to `\$`	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: Printf : How to repeat characters? by AnomalousMonk (Archbishop) on Oct 03, 2010 at 06:01 UTC
Here's another approach that allows ordinary strings, formatted pairs, and formatted pairs with repeat counts to be freely intermixed. Not extensively tested, but seems to work with fair variety of things I've tried, and both with and without file handles. (The prototype is only needed if the function is defined after the point of invocation.) Note: Needs 5.10 for `//` operator – easily replaced. `>perl -wMstrict -le "sub fmtx (@); ; print STDERR fmtx [ '%3.6f', 1.23, 3 ], '---', [ '%0x', 10 ], [ '%s', 'hi', 4 ], qq{that's all, folks \n}, ; ; sub fmtx (@) { map ref() ? sprintf($_->[0],$_->[1]) x ($_->[2] // 1) : $_, @_ } " 2> fmtx_stderr >cat fmtx_stderr 1.2300001.2300001.230000---ahihihihithat's all, folks` [download] Update: Original example code did not actually work! Fixed – as far as I can tell. Caveat Programor.	[reply] [d/l] [select]