Thanks for the prompt reply! I really appreciate your help. This works for me!

printf "%*s", 10, $some_string;
[download]

That will print your string, right justified and padded to 10 spaces. Use -10 if you want left justification.

Two ways:

1. Interpolate:

   You need to wrap the variable name in curlies to prevent the 's' being taken as a part of it:

   $space = 5; 
   printf "%${space}s\n", 'x';;
      x
   [download]

2. Let printf fill in the value for you by using the '*' specifier:

   $space = 5; 
   printf "%*s\n", $space, 'x';;
      x
   [download]

In addition to the fact that the docs for printf already say the documentation for the format string is in sprintf, adding curlies to disambiguate during interpolation is documented in perldata and has nothing to do with either printf or sprintf.