Re^3: One-liner to append text at fixed column

[Veltro]

Ok, I think I did not understand the original problem. I thought you were trying to 'align' all the comments from a text like this:

perl -E"say '.' x rand(80) . '# test comment' for 1..3"
......................# test comment
.................................# test comment
......................................................................
+....# test comment

So eventually I came up with this which I think is too complex.

perl -E"say '.' x rand(80) . '# test comment' for 1..10" |perl -lpe " 
+/\s*#(.*)$|$/ && ( substr(  $_, $-[0], length($_) ) = qq{ }x(68 - $-[
+0] + 2) . qq{ #$1} )
...............................................                       
+ # test comment
..........................................................            
+ # test comment
.......................................                               
+ # test comment
............................................................          
+ # test comment
......................................................................
+.... # test comment
......                                                                
+ # test comment
........................................                              
+ # test comment
...............................                                       
+ # test comment
...................................................                   
+ # test comment
...................................                                   
+ # test comment

Maybe it can be rewritten with a printf but I will leave it with this.

[LanX]

> I thought you were trying to align all the comments from a text like this:

Oh in this case I'd use the same "match-and-printf" construct, it's extremely flexible.

D:\tmp>perl -E"say '.' x rand(70) . '# test comment' for 1..3"
....................# test comment
...................................# test comment
.......................# test comment

D:\tmp>perl -E"say '.' x rand(70) . '# test comment' for 1..20" |perl 
+-lpe " /(.*?)(#.*)/ and $_ = sprintf qq{%-68s  %s},$1,$2"
.....................                                                 
+# test comment
..............................................................        
+# test comment
..................................................................... 
+ # test comment
....................................                                  
+# test comment
..........................................................            
+# test comment
...............................................                       
+# test comment
............................................................          
+# test comment
.............                                                         
+# test comment
...........................                                           
+# test comment
...............                                                       
+# test comment
..............................                                        
+# test comment
....................................                                  
+# test comment
...................................................                   
+# test comment
.................................                                     
+# test comment
...........................................................           
+# test comment
..........                                                            
+# test comment
.......................................................               
+# test comment
.................................................................     
+# test comment
..........................................                            
+# test comment
................................................................      
+# test comment