Question

I have a function which outputs many rows of information which I want to format in columns. The problem is that the width of any particular “cell” (if I may use that term) of data is variable, so piping it to something like awk does not give me what I want.

The function is “keys” (not that it matters) and I’m trying something like this:

$ keys | awk '{ print $1"\t\t" $2 }'

but the output (a snippet of it, that is) looks like this:

"option-y"      yank-pop
"option-z"      execute-last-named-cmd
"option-|"      vi-goto-column
"option-~"      _bash_complete-word
"option-control-?"      backward-kill-word
"control-_"     undo
"control-?"     backward-delete-char

How can I force things to stay in neat columns? Is this possible with awk, or do I need to use something else?

Answer 1

column(1) is your friend.

$ column -t <<< '"option-y"      yank-pop
> "option-z"      execute-last-named-cmd
> "option-|"      vi-goto-column
> "option-~"      _bash_complete-word
> "option-control-?"      backward-kill-word
> "control-_"     undo
> "control-?"     backward-delete-char
> '
"option-y"          yank-pop
"option-z"          execute-last-named-cmd
"option-|"          vi-goto-column
"option-~"          _bash_complete-word
"option-control-?"  backward-kill-word
"control-_"         undo
"control-?"         backward-delete-char