UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hi
A question about numeric display there...
Is there any option in awk that would prints a number with "left filled with zero" format, and how does it work with variable length definition?

For instance I´d like my variable to be left filled with 0s for a length of 3 in total:

4 would be 004
12 would be 012
312 would be 312

Any help would be much appreciated, cheers.

echo "4" | awk '{printf("%03d\n",$0)}'

this may help you

Here is an example of one way to do it:

Code:

#!/usr/bin/ksh

tmp=file.$$

cat <<EOT >$tmp
1
23
123
EOT

awk '{ printf "%03d\n", $1 }' $tmp

rm $tmp
exit 0

Many thanks