printf field width doesn't support multibyte characters?

Question

I want printf to recognize multi-byte characters when calculating the field width so that columns line up properly... I can\'t find an answer to this problem and was wonderi

Answer 1

A pure shell solution

right_justify() {
        # parameters: field_width string
        local spaces questions
        spaces=''
        questions=''
        while [ "${#questions}" -lt "$1" ]; do
                spaces=$spaces" "
                questions=$questions?
        done
        result=$spaces$2
        result=${result#"${result%$questions}"}
}

Note that this still does not work in dash because dash has no locale support.