I've tried this:

echo "${bold}User${norm} : u"\t"${bold}All Users   ${norm} : a\t"

Apologies for this, i meant to start a new thread but clicked on the wrong button

I split the thread... and I merged it with your other thread...

There are many versions of echo around. We would need to know your system and your shell. But here is something to try....

Where you have \t replace that with a real tab character.

i'm running this on Linux actually. Thanks for the suggestion to use printf. This script needs to be able to execute across platforms (Unix, Linux, Solaris), from Driver's comment i assume that printf would be more portable. correct me if i'm wrong.

Thanks again!!

printf is POSIX.2 compliant - in plain English it should be available on any Unix that claims to support POSIX standards. Old system may not have it.

printf works a lot like the C library function with the same name, except it works from the command line. It's pretty cool.

The reason POSIX standards exist is to help people who want have their code work correctly on different flavors of Unix.

i've seen scripts that use print instead of printf. what's the difference btwn the two?

print is a ksh built-in command. printf is an external program. They have very different syntax. See the man pages for details.