I have a report I need to format into a nice looking fixed length for each column of output

The report looks like this
1. First Query Title

First Query syntax (select * from tablea)
column1a ,column2a

ROWDATA.......
ROWDATA.......
ROWDATA ......


2. Second Query Title

Second Query syntax (select * from tableb)
column1b ,column2b

ROWDATA ......................................................,ROWDATA
ROWDATA.......................................................,ROWDATA

3. Third Query Syntax

Second Query syntax (select * from tablec)
column1c ,column2c

ROWDATA.................................,ROWDATA
ROWDATA.................................,ROWDATA

As you can see the column width varies from each query result set.
how can I format this report to find the end of each column yes they are all separated by commas and add only one space in order to compact the report.

The dots in each row represents a space

This one is really tough for me
any help is greatly appreciated.


Thanks

i think awk will help you out.... you can use printf to format the report

I'm not a great sql person so I normally make a file of the data from the sql statements and then use awk (as sugegsted before) to format how I want it.

I normally put it in a script, a bit like this.

sqlplus -s user/password > a_temp_file <<!
set lin 500
set pages 0
select '~', statement....
....
..;
!

I use the ~ so I can search on it later.

Then with in the same script you can use awk on the a_temp_file to change the format to what you desire. Awk should remove the extra empty spaces.

awk '/~/ {print $1, $2, $3, $4}' a_temp_file > report_file.


You can change the , to <tab> "\t" or any thing else. You can also easily put coloumn names and things like that.

Hope it helps

You can format the report with sed :
Another way is to modify your Sql query:

Jean-Pierre.