How can I align the columns of tables in Bash

Question

I d like to output a table format text  What I tried to do was echo the elements of an array with   t   but it was misaligned   My code  for  i 0 i lt array size i      do    echo stringarray  i     t  numberarray  i     t  anotherfieldarray  i  done    My output  a very long string               112232432      anotherfield a smaller string         123124343     anotherfield   Desired output  a very long string               112232432      anotherfield a smaller string                 123124343      anotherfield

User · Answer

Below code has been tested and does exactly what is requested in the original question.

Parameters: %30s Column of 30 char and text right align. %10d integer notation, %10s will also work. Added clarification included on code comments.

stringarray[0]="a very long string.........."
# 28Char (max length for this column)
numberarray[0]=1122324333
# 10digits (max length for this column)
anotherfield[0]="anotherfield"
# 12Char (max length for this column)
stringarray[1]="a smaller string....."
numberarray[1]=123124343
anotherfield[1]="anotherfield"

printf "%30s %10d %13s" "${stringarray[0]}" ${numberarray[0]} "${anotherfield[0]}"
printf "\n"
printf "%30s %10d %13s" "${stringarray[1]}" ${numberarray[1]} "${anotherfield[1]}"
# a var string with spaces has to be quoted
printf "\n Next line will fail \n"      
printf "%30s %10d %13s" ${stringarray[0]} ${numberarray[0]} "${anotherfield[0]}"



  a very long string.......... 1122324333  anotherfield
         a smaller string.....  123124343  anotherfield

User · Answer

Just in case someone wants to do that in PHP I posted a gist on Github  https   gist github com redestructa 2a7691e7f3ae69ec5161220c99e2d1b3  simply call    output    tablePrinter- gt printLinesIntoArray  items    title    chilProp2       you may need to adapt the code if you are using a php version older than 7 2  after that call echo or writeLine depending on your environment

User · Answer

Not sure where you were running this  but the code you posted would not produce the output you gave  at least not in the bash that I m familiar with   Try this instead   stringarray   test   some thing   very long long long string   blah   numberarray  1 22 7777 8888888888  anotherfieldarray   other   mixed  456  data   array size 4  for  i 0 i lt array size i     do     echo   stringarray  i      x1d    numberarray  i      x1d    anotherfieldarray  i   done   column -t -s   x1d    Note that I m using the group seperator character  1d  intead of tab  because if you are getting these arrays from a file  they might contain tabs

User · Answer

Use column command   column -t -s    filename

User · Answer

function printTable         local -r delimiter    1       local -r data    removeEmptyLines    2          if       delimiter          amp  amp     isEmptyString    data        false         then         local -r numberOfLines    wc -l  lt  lt  lt     data              if       numberOfLines   -gt  0             then             local table                local i 1              for   i   1  i  lt      numberOfLines    i   i   1               do                 local line                    line    sed    i q d   lt  lt  lt     data                      local numberOfColumns  0                  numberOfColumns    awk -F    delimiter     print NF    lt  lt  lt     line                        Add Line Delimiter                  if       i   -eq  1                     then                     table    table   printf   s       repeatString         numberOfColumns                       fi                    Add Header Or Body                  table    table  n                   local j 1                  for   j   1  j  lt      numberOfColumns    j   j   1                   do                     table    table   printf      s     cut -d    delimiter   -f    j    lt  lt  lt     line                       done                  table    table    n                     Add Line Delimiter                  if       i   -eq  1              numberOfLines   -gt  1   amp  amp     i   -eq    numberOfLines                      then                     table    table   printf   s       repeatString         numberOfColumns                       fi             done              if       isEmptyString    table        false                 then                 echo -e    table     column -s     -t   awk        gsub       -    0  1              fi         fi     fi    function removeEmptyLines         local -r content    1        echo -e    content     sed     s   d     function repeatString         local -r string    1       local -r numberToRepeat    2        if       string          amp  amp     numberToRepeat        1-9  0-9           then         local -r result    printf     numberToRepeat s            echo -e    result      string        fi    function isEmptyString         local -r string    1        if       trimString    string                 then         echo  true   amp  amp  return 0     fi      echo  false   amp  amp  return 1    function trimString         local -r string    1        sed  s     blank         lt  lt  lt     string     sed  s    blank             SAMPLE RUNS    cat data-1 txt HEADER 1 HEADER 2 HEADER 3    printTable        cat data-1 txt    ----------- ----------- -----------    HEADER 1    HEADER 2    HEADER 3     ----------- ----------- -----------     cat data-2 txt HEADER 1 HEADER 2 HEADER 3 data 1 data 2 data 3    printTable        cat data-2 txt    ----------- ----------- -----------    HEADER 1    HEADER 2    HEADER 3     ----------- ----------- -----------    data 1      data 2      data 3       ----------- ----------- -----------     cat data-3 txt HEADER 1 HEADER 2 HEADER 3 data 1 data 2 data 3 data 4 data 5 data 6    printTable        cat data-3 txt    ----------- ----------- -----------    HEADER 1    HEADER 2    HEADER 3     ----------- ----------- -----------    data 1      data 2      data 3        data 4      data 5      data 6       ----------- ----------- -----------     cat data-4 txt HEADER data    printTable        cat data-4 txt    ---------    HEADER     ---------    data       ---------     cat data-5 txt HEADER  data 1  data 2    printTable        cat data-5 txt    ---------    HEADER     ---------    data 1      data 2     ---------    REF LIB at  https   github com gdbtek linux-cookbooks blob master libraries util bash

User · Answer

It s easier than you wonder   If you are working with a separated by semicolon file and header too      head -n1 file csv  amp  amp  sort file csv   grep -v  lt header gt     column -s    -t   If you are working with array  using tab as separator    for  i 0 i lt array size i      do     echo stringarray  i     t  numberarray  i     t  anotherfieldarray  i   gt  gt  tmp file csv  done   cat file csv   column -t

User · Answer

printf is great  but people forget about it     for num in 1 10 100 1000 10000 100000 1000000  do printf   10s  s n   num  foobar   done          1 foobar         10 foobar        100 foobar       1000 foobar      10000 foobar     100000 foobar    1000000 foobar    for  i 0 i lt array size i      do     printf   10s  10d  10s  stringarray  i  numberarray  i  anotherfieldarray  i  done   Notice I used  10s for strings    s is the important part   It tells it to use a string   The 10 in the middle says how many columns it is to be    d is for numerics  digits    man 1 printf for more info

User · Answer

To have the exact same output as you need  you need to format the file like that    a very long string           t     112232432 t     anotherfield n a smaller string t      123124343 t     anotherfield n   And then using      column -t -s    t  FILE a very long string            112232432  anotherfield a smaller string              123124343  anotherfield

User · Answer

awk solution that deals with stdin  Since column is not POSIX  maybe this is   mycolumn       file    1 --     if     file    -    then     file    mktemp       cat  gt     file     fi   awk     FNR    1   if  NR    FNR  next     NR    FNR       for  i   1  i  lt   NF  i            l   length  i        if  w i   lt  l          w i    l           next             for  i   1  i  lt   NF  i          printf    s   w i     i  gt  1   1   0    i     print              file    file    if     1    -    then     rm   file    fi     Test   printf  12 1234 1 12345678 1 123 1234 123456 123456    gt  file   Test commands   mycolumn file mycolumn  lt file mycolumn -  lt file   Output for all         12   1234      1 12345678      1    123     1234 123456 123456   See also    Using awk to align columns in text file  AWK  go through the file twice  doing different tasks

[bash] How can I align the columns of tables in Bash?

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