I used printf to print the following under SFU,

lrs=`cat lrs`
hrs=`cat hrs`
tp=`cat tp`
printf “\n\n%5sM = $lrs Ohms%5sX = $hrs Ohms%5sT = $tp %%\n\n\n” > file
cat file

With the above script, I used %% after $tp only as a percentage sign and I get only the following output:

% T = value of tp



Any suggestions?

Try reading the man pages for printf. Here's an example...

Thanks, Ygor! That works.

Ygor,

I tried your suggestion as follows:
a=1
b=2
c=3

Printf ‘ M = %s Ohms X = %s Ohms T = %s %%’ $a $b $c

The above format worked fine but when a Command Substitution is used to set the Variables, I noticed that it does not give the right output. I did the following:

#value of lrs = 710
lrs=`cat lrs`
#value of hrs = 910
hrs=`cat hrs`
#value of tp = 3
tp=`cat tp`
printf ‘\n\nM = %s Ohms X = %s Ohms T = %s %%\n\n\n’ $lrs $hrs $tp

The output is:
%hms T = 310

The desired output should be:
M = 710 Ohms X = 910 Ohms T = 3 %

Those quotes in your printf statement look odd. Make sure you are using 'straight quotes', not ‘directional quotes’.

Or perhaps you have some weird characters in the files? Check by using od -hc lrs etc.
You can remove all non-numeric characters by using lrs=`tr -dc '[0-9]' < lrs`

Hi Ygor,

Sorry, it was just a typographical error from my last message regarding those odd single quotes but in my script they are actually straight quotes. Anyway, I had to do the following long and tedious way just to produce the right output:

Printf '\n\t\t\b\b\bRmin = %s\t\t\t\t\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\bOhms Rmax = %s\t\t\t\t\t\t\b\b\b\b\bOhms Tilt = %s\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\b\b\b\b%%' $lrs $hrs $tp

Output:

Rmin = 710 Ohms Rmax = 910 Ohms Tilt = 3 %

From the above printf statement, I noticed that if I use two or more variables, the numeric & non-numeric variables overwrite each other depending on their length. I need the non-numeric characters in my variables so I can’t remove those. Thus, I had to utilize series of tab and backspace characters so it would get the desired output. Is there an easier way to do this?