CODEWITHSUNDEEP
shell
Christopher
Christopher

Reputation: 1772

How do I align my output?

I'm writing a script that takes a parameter and reads the output of ls -l. It then displays the user and the name of the file STARTING with that parameter.

For example :

$> ls -l | ./script.sh "o"
John        ok_test
RandomUser  o_file

My script works just fine, but I have one (minor) problem that I truly need to fix : it does not align the file names as in the example above.

Here is the said script :

#!/bin/bash                                                                                                                                                                                   

while read hello
do
    name=$(echo $hello | cut -d' ' -f9 | grep "^"$1)
    if [ $? = 0 ]
    then
        log=$(echo $hello | cut -d' ' -f3)
        echo -n -e $log'\t' && echo $name
    fi
done

Does anyone of you know a way to align the output no matter the size of the user name?

Thanks a lot.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 137

Answers (1)

glenn jackman
glenn jackman

Reputation: 246774

I'd rewrite that as:

#!/bin/bash
while read -ra hello; do
    name=${hello[8]}
    if [[ $name == "$1"* ]]; then
        log=${hello[2]}
        echo "$log $name"
    fi
done | column -t

read -ra splits the input line and stores the words in the "hello" array.
[[ $name == "$1"* ]] is a built-in way to check if a string begins with some value.

Upvotes: 1

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