How can I align the columns of tables in Bash?

Question

I\'d like to output a table format text. What I tried to do was echo the elements of an array with \'\\t\', but it was misaligned.

My code

for((i=0;i         


        

Answer 1

To have the exact same output as you need, you need to format the file like that :

a very long string..........\t     112232432\t     anotherfield\n
a smaller string\t      123124343\t     anotherfield\n

And then using :

$ column -t -s $'\t' FILE
a very long string..........  112232432  anotherfield
a smaller string              123124343  anotherfield