Problem with printing

Shell Programming and Scripting
1

Hi, i am writing a script to generate a summary report for my data text file
my data in my text file goes like this:

MacOS:Mary Abraham:53.48:88:38
Windows in lala:Mary Abraham:22.30:23:22
lala in Windows:John Goodman:33.60:121:12
Hello world:Mr Tian:23.30:23:10
Windows in 31 days:John Badman:33.70:212:13

and this is my code to print the data out

BEGIN{
 FS=":"
 print " " 
 print "===================================Summary Report================================================="
 print "=================================================================================================="
 print "|Title          | \tAuthor                   \t|Price \t|Qty Available|Qty Sold|Total|"
 print "=================================================================================================="
}
{
        title = $1
        author = $2
        price = $3
        available = $4
        sold = $5
        total = $3 * $5
 printf("%s\t                   %s\t$%s\t\t%s\t%s\t$%s\n", title, author, price, available, sold, total)
 
}
END{
 }

the output will be

788×170 26.3 KB

I will like to know is there any ways I can change my code to make sure that the data in each column will align properly under the respectively title? Thank You

2

You can use sprintf function with the specific length, so that your output will be perfect.

3

example Code

printf "%-10s,%15s"

this would ensure exactly 10 - before printing , so on you align what you want to print.