Right justifying text in a template field

[olecs]

Hello all,
say I have the following template and code - (note that the code is just for illustration, it might not run):

  $TEMP = "\@0 A1 \@1 A12";
  $string = "AAAA";
  $res = pack($TEMP, "V", $string);
  print "$res\n";

Now, when printing $res AAAA will be left justified and followed by 8 blanks - is it possible to make it right justified using the template mechanism? I could of course resort to using printf instead, but for my current purpose templates feel so right

rgds,
Ole C.

Update
As ikegami suggested I will use sprintf inside the pack statement to format the text the way it needs to be, something like:

  pack($TEMP, "V", sprintf("%12s", "$string"));

takes care of it. The reason for using pack in the first place is that I have to create very long lines with different data and a very rigid structure for where the data should be. pack makes it easy to ensure that everything comes in the right place.

[ikegami]

pack is meant for creating C structs, not for formatting. Try printf/sprintf:

$formatted = sprintf('%5s',  'abc');  # '  abc'
$formatted = sprintf('%-5s', 'abc');  # 'abc  '

You could always pack what sprintf returns, if you need pack.