Padding characters in printf

Question

I am writing a bash shell script to display if a process is running or not.

So far, I got this:

printf \"%-50s %s\\n\" $PROC_NAME [UP]

Answer 1

echo -n "$PROC_NAME $(printf '\055%.0s' {1..40})" | head -c 40 ; echo -n " [UP]"

Explanation:

• printf '\055%.0s' {1..40} - Create 40 dashes
  (dash is interpreted as option so use escaped ascii code instead)
• "$PROC_NAME ..." - Concatenate $PROC_NAME and dashes
• | head -c 40 - Trim string to first 40 chars