Question

In perl you can simply write print “-” x 20 and you get a line with dashes…but i need the same thing in bash/commandline on linux without perl/(g)awk etc. any ideas? The intention is to use it in the -exec of the find command and i want to prevent using simple echo “———” …

Answer 1

you can create you own function

customprint(){
  num=$1
  symbol=$2
  for((i=1;i<=$num;i++));do printf "%s" $symbol; done
}

customprint 20 "-"

or

customprint(){
  num=$1
  symbol=$2
  a=$(printf "%0${num}s")
  echo ${a// /$symbol}
}

customprint 20 "-"

or

num=20
eval printf '%.0s-' {1..$num}