UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Howdy,

Supposing I want to output the following code to the screen in a bash script, this works fine until you use variables as below, because the variable could be of any length, meaning the screen output for line 2 will have the ultimate # out of alignment.
Is there a simple way round this?
I have looked at hidden characters in vim using :set invlist but am a bit stumped.

Code:

echo "#############################"
echo "# line1 $var1 $var2             #"
echo "#############################"

thanks

Nick

In bash, one way:

Code:

LL=$(echo "# line1 $1 $2 #"|wc -c)
LL=$((LL - 1))
printf "%${LL}s\n" " " | tr " " "#"
echo "# line1 $1 $2 #"
printf "%${LL}s\n" " " | tr " " "#"

HTH