On 2024-05-06 22:52, Roman Perepelitsa wrote:
> You don't need to "cobble together complicated variables" here. Just
> printf straight away to stdout.
I know, I  mean in other situations where the variable really is 
complicated.  I've seen 'printf  -v' offered previously to do some 
pretty fancy stuff.

>      % n=10
>      % y=${(r:n:: :)}  # n spaces
>      % x='hello'
>      % z=${(r:n:: :)x}  # right-justified x
Jim Murphy offered:

         spacer=${(l:diff:::: :)}

... very much in the same school of thought.  Feels more 'direct', if 
that means anything.  Mark suggests I shouldn't worry so much about 
'economy' -- I tend to not want to use an elephant's worth of 
functionality ( printf ) where a mouses worth will do.  But maybe that's 
not a valid way to think cuz I can't really anticipate how the shell 
will actually get the work done.