Well, mixed up your var names. This is what I meant:

    spacer=$(printf "%${diff}s" '')


On Mon, May 6, 2024 at 6:33 PM Mark J. Reed <markjreed@gmail.com> wrote:

> printf "%${spacer}s" "" ?
>
> Mark J. Reed <markjreed@gmail.com>
>
>
> On Mon, May 6, 2024 at 18:04 Ray Andrews <rayandrews@eastlink.ca> wrote:
>
>> So I want to adjust the length of string1. I do this  by inserting a
>> spacer in string1 who's length is calculated from the length of string2:
>>
>>     local diff spacer
>>     (( diff = $#string2 - 76 ))
>>     for (( dd=1; dd<diff; dd++ )); do spacer+=' '; done
>>     ... # spacer will be incorporated into string1, not shown.
>>
>> It works fine, but I'll bet there's a less laborious way -- some way of
>> creating 'spacer' with  'diff' number of spaces without the for loop.  I
>> could make 'spacer' too long and then cut it at an index [diff], but I
>> doubt that's as simple as it could be.  I know it's there, I just can't
>> quite remember.
>>
>>
>>

-- 
Mark J. Reed <markjreed@gmail.com>