Fixing line length in a file

dbessell · #1 (**permalink**) 08-03-2003

I have a file containing many lines all with varying lengths. I need each line in the file to be 100 characters in width but I can not find a way of doing this. I want to append to each line spaces to bring the width of the line to 100 but I need a generic way to work out how many spaces I need.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

RTM · #2 (**permalink**) 08-04-2003

You can find line length with
% cat myinputfile | awk '{print length($0)}'

You would have to add that to your script or process (if a script, then you can find the length of spaces needed by 100 - output_returned) Check the man page on printf, expr, and awk.

Perderabo · #3 (**permalink**) 08-04-2003

I think that this should do it...

Code:

#! /usr/bin/ksh
typeset -L100 line
IFS=""
while read line ; do 
         echo "$line"
done
exit 0

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