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repeat character with printf

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# 1  
Old 12-13-2007
repeat character with printf
It's all in the subject. I try to figure out how to repeat a character a number of time with printf.

For example to draw a line in a script output.

Thks
# 2  
Old 12-13-2007
I didn't know repeating characters was printf's speciality Smilie

If you don't mind using perl, this should be ok:

Code:
$ perl -e 'print "-" x 25,"\n"'
-------------------------

HTH
# 3  
Old 12-13-2007
Thanks. I was hoping to find some pure bash solution like padding with a custom character like in PHP

Code:
printf("%'#10s\n",  '');

Still looking.
# 4  
Old 12-13-2007
ksh93/bash:

Code:
for i in {1..100};do printf "%s" "#";done;printf "\n"

zsh:

Code:
repeat 100 printf "#";print

or:

ksh93/zsh and bash:

Code:
ch="$(printf "%100s" "")"
printf "%s\n" "${ch// /#}"


bash3 Smilie

Code:
printf -vch  "%100s" ""
printf "%s\n" "${ch// /#}"

and another one with zsh:

Code:
print "${$(printf "%100s" "")// /#}"

Last edited by radoulov; 12-13-2007 at 07:13 AM..
# 5  
Old 12-13-2007
Quote:
Originally Posted by radoulov
Code:
printf -vch  "%100s" ""
printf "%s\n" "${ch// /#}"

I like that one. The best I could come up with was this:

Code:
LINE="########################################################"
echo ${LINE,0,15}

Thank you.
# 6  
Old 12-13-2007
Sorry,
in zsh it could be just like this Smilie

Code:
print ${(l:100::#:)}

# 7  
Old 12-13-2007
I have never found a real great ksh method that doesn't resort to the extentions of ksh93. But if I need this, I use a function...

Code:
$ function fill { typeset i=$1 c="$2" s="" ; while ((i)) ; do ((i=i-1)) ; s="$s$c" ; done ; echo  "$s" ; }
$ s=$(fill 15 \*)
$ echo "$s"
***************
$

In retrospect, "repeat" might have been a better name for the function than "fill". Maybe I'll change the name next time I use it.
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