Shell Programming and Scripting

I am trying to print a line using awk printf command. The problem I am having is that when the string has spaces in between, it only prints the word upto the first space.

For example, if my variable has "Hello World"
The output is only "Hello".

Here is the command I am using

echo $recCtr ${f4} ${f5} ${f6} ${f7} |\
awk '{printf "%3d %-22s %5d %-22s %-250s\n", $1, $2, $3, $4, $5 }' >>$REPORT

here ${f7} is a field that is a sentence.

Can Someone help me to print the whole sentence without truncating at the first space?

Thanks

Code:

echo $recCtr ${f4} ${f5} ${f6} ${f7} |\
awk '{str=$5;for(i=6;i<=NF;++i) str=str FS $i; printf "%3d %-22s %5d %-22s %-250s\n", $1, $2, $3, $4, str }' >>$REPORT

why no just use /usr/bin/printf and keep it in shell, quoting the variables...like this:

Code:

/usr/bin/printf "%3d %-22s %5d %-22s %-250s\n" "${f4}" "${f5}" "${f6}" "${f7}" >>$REPORT

You are aware that you are printing five fields and only supplying four right?