CODEWITHSUNDEEP
printingescapingawk
Todd
Todd

Reputation: 219

AWK print format problem

I have a file with data 

number  name               age sex
102234  James_Mckenzie      21  M
102233  Jim_Reil            24  M
102235  Alan_Lightbrighter  19  M

...

and I am trying to print them out in such form

number : 
name   :                  age :
sex    :

so basically, the printout will be like this,

number : 102233
name   : Jim_Reil         age : 24
sex    : M
number : 102235
name   : Alan_Lightbrighter      age : 19
sex    : M
...

The problem is I am trying to keep up with spacing between name and age, but due to the variable name length, the position of 'age' is not where I am want(I used /t for spacing) What would be the best way to fix this issue?

I am sorry if this has been asked thousand times already.(I spend some time searching but I guess my search keyword sucked :( )

Thanks

Upvotes: 0

Views: 426

Answers (1)

paxdiablo
paxdiablo

Reputation: 881993

Don't use tabs for spacing since that relies entirely on the vagaries of your terminal.

Figure out what the largest name is likely to be and use printf with a %-50s format specifier (50 characters wide, left justified) on your name, as per the following transcript:

$ echo '1 pax X
2 paxdiablo_with_a_very_long_name Y' | awk '{printf "%3d %-40s %s\n",$1,$2,$3}'

  1 pax                                      X
  2 paxdiablo_with_a_very_long_name          Y

Or, closer to your requirements:

$ echo '102234  James_Mckenzie      21  M
102233  Jim_Reil            24  M
102235  Alan_Lightbrighter  19  M' | awk '
    {printf "number : %d\nname   : %-20s  age : %d\nsex    : %s\n",$1,$2,$3,$4}'

number : 102234
name   : James_Mckenzie        age : 21
sex    : M
number : 102233
name   : Jim_Reil              age : 24
sex    : M
number : 102235
name   : Alan_Lightbrighter    age : 19
sex    : M

Obviously, the 50 and 20 are examples - you should choose a size that suits your needs. If necessary, you could even go through the file on the first pass to work out the largest name and then use a format string constructed from that in a second pass to print, but that's probably overkill.

Upvotes: 1

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