Shell Programming and Scripting

Ok I have a PERL script that reads an .xml file. One of the new services listed in the file, is alot longer than the others. I am trying to get a way for the spaces of the Service module to read the .xml file and set the length of the %s to the longest Service

Code:

my $jmsfn = "jms-connection.xml";
 
sub getJmsPathName($) {
  my ($i) = @_;
   return sprintf "/tmp/$jmsfn", $APSAPPDIR, $i, $i;
}
 
my $format = "%8s %15s %8s %s\n";
   printf $format, "Instance", "Service", "Actual", "Configured";
  foreach my $i (@instances) {
    prolix("Checking instance: " . $i);
    my $jmsref = getJmsXml($i);
    foreach my $c (@{$jmsref->{JMSConnConfig}->{JMSConnections}->{Connection}})

The format is currently set at 15, but I want it to be set to the amount of spaces of the longest Service, becuase it is messing up the column alignment. I know I need to add a subroutine, I am just not sure how I should set it to recgognize the value.

you have to figure out the length of the longest name of the service and then assign it to $format

Yes I know that, and I know the actual length, it is 24, but I do not want to just put 24......Lets say in 3 months a new Key in the list is 28, I dont want to keep having to go back and change it. I want to create a sub routine to determine the maxWidth of the Service names and set the width of the column to the number of characters in the longest name.