I'm writing a script to analyze the logs of an smtp relay machine and I'd like the final output to be displayed in columns showing results from the previous day, week, month, and 45 days. The problem I'm running into is that I can't figure out how to display the columns neatly so there is no staggering.

This is similar to what I end up with:
_______________________________________________

Daily Weekly Monthy
_______________________________________________

1). 234 domain 1). 435 domain 1). 4576 domain
2). 12 domain 2). 23 domain 2). 34 domain
3). 2 domian 3). 3 domain 3). domain

Even when I use tabs between the parameters, not all the columns line up nicely.

Anyway, here's how I got this far:

After getting all the lines from the logs, I got the domain name from each line, sorted the names, counted the duplicate lines, and put the top results from each given time period into a file with the lines numbered. The file looks something like this:

1). DailyResults 346 domainName
2). DailyResults 243 domainName
3). DailyResults 123 domainName
1). WeeklyResults 345 domainName
2). WeeklyResults 234 domainName
3). WeeklyResults 123 domainName
1). MonthlyResults 345 domainName
2). MonthlyResults 234 domainName
3). MonthlyResults 123 domainName
1). TotalResults 345 domainName
2). TotalResults 234 domainName
3). TotalResults 123 domainName

Then I used a command for each line to join the lines:

echo `cat list_of_domains|grep "1)."|awk '{print $1, $2 ,$4" "$5 ,$6, $8," "$9, $10, $12" "$13, $14, $16}'`

Which gives me this output:

1). 234 domain 1). 435 domain 1). 4576 domain
2). 12 domain 2). 23 domain 2). 34 domain
3). 2 domian 3). 3 domain 3). domain

(something like this trivial example would probably line up well by using tabs between the parameters, but of course, the domain names i'm working with vary in length much more)

At this point the script is pretty ugly and I'm willing to attack this problem from a different angle if anyone has any suggestions. Any help is greatly appreciated.
THANKS!
-JJ

man printf

It'll allow you to block, pad, type or otherwise tweak your vars into a reasonable format.