Aligning text in tables in the console may sometimes prove quite a challenge.
The first and easiest way you should try, of course, is using tabs:
first 1 next 2 last 3
In this case, it works, because the texts in the first column are of almost equal length.
But what if they aren't?
fire truck 1 bicycle 2 pedestrian 3
As you can see in the above example, the numbers are no longer properly aligned in the second column, because the text lengths in the first column differ more than a tab can compensate for.
The way to go would be padding the texts in the first column with spaces until they are all of equal length.
fire truck 1 bicycle 2 pedestrian 3
| Note: | Hover the mouse pointer over the whitespace in the tables above to see the number of tabs or spaces required to align this text as a table. |
Let's take this list of Beatles' song titles from a file named songs.txt:
A Day In The Life All You Need Is Love And Your Bird Can Sing Dear Prudence Girl Hey Bulldog Hey Jude In My Life Lady Madonna Let It Be Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds Michelle Nowhere Man Ob-La-Di- Ob-La-Da Penny Lane Run For Your Life Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band Strawberry Fields Forever The Fool On The Hill With A Little Help From My Friends Yesterday
Now, with batch code, let's create a table with the song titles in the first column, and the artists (The Beatles in this case) in the second column.
With just tabs, the code is simple:
@ECHO OFF FOR /F "tokens=*" %%A IN (songs.txt) DO ( REM %%A is followed by a single tab and then 'The Beatles' ECHO.%%A The Beatles )
but the output is a mess:
A Day In The Life The Beatles All You Need Is Love The Beatles And Your Bird Can Sing The Beatles Dear Prudence The Beatles Girl The Beatles Hey Bulldog The Beatles Hey Jude The Beatles In My Life The Beatles Lady Madonna The Beatles Let It Be The Beatles Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds The Beatles Michelle The Beatles Nowhere Man The Beatles Ob-La-Di- Ob-La-Da The Beatles Penny Lane The Beatles Run For Your Life The Beatles Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band The Beatles Strawberry Fields Forever The Beatles The Fool On The Hill The Beatles With A Little Help From My Friends The Beatles Yesterday The Beatles
Appending 40 spaces to each title and then truncating the result at 40 characters looks a lot better:
@ECHO OFF SETLOCAL ENABLEDELAYEDEXPANSION :: The equal sign is followed by 40 spaces and a doublequote SET "FortySpaces= " FOR /F "tokens=*" %%A IN (songs.txt) DO ( REM Variable 'Line' contains one line, i.e. one complete title SET Line=%%A REM Append 40 spaces to the title SET Line=!Line!%FortySpaces% REM Truncate title plus spaces at 40 characters SET Line=!Line:~0,40! REM Append the artist name SET Line=!Line! The Beatles REM Display the result ECHO.!Line! ) ENDLOCAL
This is the output of the batch code:
A Day In The Life The Beatles All You Need Is Love The Beatles And Your Bird Can Sing The Beatles Dear Prudence The Beatles Girl The Beatles Hey Bulldog The Beatles Hey Jude The Beatles In My Life The Beatles Lady Madonna The Beatles Let It Be The Beatles Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds The Beatles Michelle The Beatles Nowhere Man The Beatles Ob-La-Di- Ob-La-Da The Beatles Penny Lane The Beatles Run For Your Life The Beatles Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band The Beatles Strawberry Fields Forever The Beatles The Fool On The Hill The Beatles With A Little Help From My Friends The Beatles Yesterday The Beatles
Close enough for now!
Had we chosen 30 characters instead of 40 for the first column, some titles would have been chopped:
A Day In The Life The Beatles All You Need Is Love The Beatles And Your Bird Can Sing The Beatles Dear Prudence The Beatles Girl The Beatles Hey Bulldog The Beatles Hey Jude The Beatles In My Life The Beatles Lady Madonna The Beatles Let It Be The Beatles Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds The Beatles Michelle The Beatles Nowhere Man The Beatles Ob-La-Di- Ob-La-Da The Beatles Penny Lane The Beatles Run For Your Life The Beatles Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Clu The Beatles Strawberry Fields Forever The Beatles The Fool On The Hill The Beatles With A Little Help From My Fri The Beatles Yesterday The Beatles
With 50 or even more characters for the first column, the whitespace between columns would have been too wide.
So if you don't know what text to expect in the first column, how do you make it just wide enough?
This will require some code to determine string lengths.
For long strings, or strings of unknown length, you can use Dave Benham's rather complex "successive approximation" approach; this will work for any string of any length.
For text alignment in the console, however, we usually won't have to deal with string of over 80 characters, so we can use the simpler "brute force" approach demonstrated in the GetMaxStringLength subroutine below:
@ECHO OFF SETLOCAL ENABLEDELAYEDEXPANSION :: First iterate through the list to find the length of the longest title SET ColumnWidth=0 FOR /F "tokens=*" %%A IN (songs.txt) DO ( CALL :GetMaxStringLength ColumnWidth "%%~A" ) :: The equal sign is followed by 80 spaces and a doublequote SET "EightySpaces= " FOR /F "tokens=*" %%A IN (songs.txt) DO ( REM Append 80 spaces after song title SET Column=%%A%EightySpaces% REM Chop at maximum column width, using a FOR loop REM as a kind of "super delayed" variable expansion FOR %%W IN (!ColumnWidth!) DO SET Column=!Column:~0,%%W! REM Append artist name and display the result ECHO.!Column! The Beatles ) ENDLOCAL GOTO:EOF :GetMaxStringLength :: Usage : GetMaxStringLength OutVariableName StringToBeMeasured :: Note : OutVariable may already have an initial value SET StrTest=%~2 :: Just add zero, in case the initial value is empty SET /A %1 += 0 :: Maximum length we will allow, modify appended spaces accordingly SET MaxLength=80 IF %MaxLength% GTR !%1! ( FOR /L %%A IN (!%1!,1,%MaxLength%) DO ( IF NOT "!StrTest:~%%A!"=="" ( SET /A %1 = %%A + 1 ) ) ) GOTO:EOF
Much more complex code, but a much more satisfying result:
A Day In The Life The Beatles All You Need Is Love The Beatles And Your Bird Can Sing The Beatles Dear Prudence The Beatles Girl The Beatles Hey Bulldog The Beatles Hey Jude The Beatles In My Life The Beatles Lady Madonna The Beatles Let It Be The Beatles Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds The Beatles Michelle The Beatles Nowhere Man The Beatles Ob-La-Di- Ob-La-Da The Beatles Penny Lane The Beatles Run For Your Life The Beatles Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band The Beatles Strawberry Fields Forever The Beatles The Fool On The Hill The Beatles With A Little Help From My Friends The Beatles Yesterday The Beatles
| Notes: | [1] | You may want to limit the first column's width (variable MaxLength) to allow some room for column 2 within the console's limited width. |
| [2] | In English Windows versions, use the following command to determine the total available width for the columns: FOR /F "tokens=2 delims=:" %%A IN ('MODE CON ^| FIND "Columns"') DO SET ConsoleWidth=%%A |
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