Shell Programming and Scripting

I would like to use printf (or something else?) to create a line of text that has varying column widths. This will be used to create a fixed width file (with varying column widths). For example, consider variables $1 $2 $3 are equal to a, b, c respectively and they should be printed in column positions 1, 5, 15 respectively so the output would be:
a___b_________c
(ignore the underlines)

I was thinking I could use awk for this but it isn't clear to me how I could use awk without a file input (I just want to be able to pass text or variables).

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated... maybe there's a simple perl command, a combination of multiple print commands, or something else I should be using?

Try regular shell:

Code:

printf "%-4s%-10s%s\n" "$1" "$2" "$3"

I just figured it out just as you posted. Thanks!!!

Less negative "%s%4s%10s\n" ?

Sorry, but that (post #2) won't yield a FIXED width file - which was part of the request - should the contents of $3 vary. You need to specify the third column output width as well, then.

EDIT: same applies to DGPickett's proposal, should $1 vary in length.

I guess it depends on whether he wants it to spill over right or left.

Code:

$ printf '%s%4s%10s\n' 1 2 3
1   2         3
$ printf '%s%4s%10s\n' 1 22 33
1  22        33
$

'%1.1s%4.4s%10.10s\n' truncates, freezes last column to pos ?
'%-4.4s%-10.10s%s\n' truncates, freezes first column to pos ?

@RudiC: OP will figure it out, it was just an example. The post was more about using shell's printf instead of an external utility. Besides what if a value is wider than the intended width?