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.