how to print formatted output on terminal using C?

Question

I have written a code for a Library system in C. And I want to show the output in following manner on terminal on Linux. I tried with "\t" but the output gets disturbed when the string size varies. I want to print it in fixed manner no matter what string size comes.

I want to print output like below-

I tried to print this using "\t" but the format gets disturbed when the string length of book or author gets smaller or larger. Can somebody help me with this??

Possible duplicate of How can I clean up misaligned columns in text? — Lahiru Jayakody
– Lahiru Jayakody, Commented Feb 10, 2017 at 9:02

Lahiru Jayakody · Accepted Answer · 2017-02-10 08:58:47Z

1

Print with fixed character size. Here it is 7,11 and 10 for columns. Refer this for more details this

printf("Column1    Column2   Column3\n");
printf("%7d%11s%10d\n", 100, "String1", 9348);
printf("%7d%11s%10d\n", 23, "String2", 214);

answered Feb 10, 2017 at 8:58

Lahiru Jayakody

5,4381 gold badge31 silver badges44 bronze badges

Sign up to request clarification or add additional context in comments.

1 Comment

Vishal Patil Over a year ago

Thank you so much buddy. It's really easy and it helped me to get the output like what I wanted to have. Thanks :)

user6065366 · Accepted Answer · 2017-02-10 09:05:15Z

1

use printf like this :

printf("%-25s|\n", "a string");
printf("%-25s|\n", "another string");

(the - in %-25s is use to left-justifies your text)

answered Feb 10, 2017 at 9:05

user6065366

Comments

Spektre · Accepted Answer · 2017-02-10 09:19:28Z

0

not a linux user (hope we are talking about monospace output) but my experienceis that tab has usually configurable size so if you format for 6 character length and someone have 4 character tab the result will be bad. The safest is to use spaces. You can use formated output like:

printf("float number: 8.3%f",7.56);

But that is not always a good choice for example sometimes negative sign mess up things ...

I usually handle such formatting my self with use of string variables:

line = ""
item = "single unformated text value"
compute length of item
add missing spaces (before or after) to line or item
add item to line
loop #2 for all items
output line
loop #1 for all lines

edited Feb 10, 2017 at 9:19

answered Feb 10, 2017 at 9:04

Spektre

52.3k12 gold badges125 silver badges413 bronze badges

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

how to print formatted output on terminal using C?

3 Answers 3

1 Comment

Comments

Comments

Your Answer

Linked

Hot Network Questions

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

3 Answers 3

1 Comment

Comments

Comments

Your Answer

Sign up or log in

Post as a guest

Linked

Related