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

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

User · Answer

Use column command   column -t -s    filename

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

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

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

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

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

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

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