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Print a row of characters across the terminal

Terminal - Print a row of characters across the terminal
seq -s'#' 0 $(tput cols) | tr -d '[:digit:]'
2010-04-01 09:06:44
User: jgc
Functions: seq tput tr
6
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Print a row of characters across the terminal

Print a row of characters across the terminal. Uses tput to establish the current terminal width, and generates a line of characters just long enough to cross it. In the example '#' is used.

It's possible to use a repeating sequence by dividing the columns by the number of characters in the sequence like this:

seq -s'~-' 0 $(( $(tput cols) /2 )) | tr -d '[:digit:]'

or

seq -s'-~?' 0 $(( $(tput cols) /3 )) | tr -d '[:digit:]'

You will lose chararacters at the end if the length isn't cleanly divisible.

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Alternatives

There are 8 alternatives - vote for the best!

Terminal - Alternatives
printf "%`tput cols`s"|tr ' ' '#'
2010-04-05 17:12:35
User: kamathln
Functions: printf tr
Tags: tr tput printf
15
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Print a row of characters across the terminal

shorter than alternative

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printf -v row "%${COLUMNS}s"; echo ${row// /#}
2010-04-13 21:56:46
User: dennisw
Functions: echo printf
Tags: tr tput printf
4
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Print a row of characters across the terminal

Pure Bash

This will print a row of characters the width of the screen without using any external executables. In some cases, COLUMNS may not be set. Here is an alternative that uses tput to generate a default if that's the case. And it still avoids using tr.

printf -v row "%${COLUMNS:-$(tput cols)}s"; echo ${row// /#}

The only disadvantage to either one is that they create a variable.

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L(){ l=`builtin printf %${2:-$COLUMNS}s` && echo -e "${l// /${1:-=}}"; }
2010-06-14 04:35:30
User: AskApache
Functions: echo printf
Tags: bash echo color terminal function line tput builtin askapache colors printf terminfo termcap term COLUMNS
2
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PRINT LINE the width of screen or specified using any char including Colors, Escapes and metachars

One of the first functions programmers learn is how to print a line. This is my 100% bash builtin function to do it, which makes it as optimal as a function can be. The COLUMNS environment variable is also set by bash (including bash resetting its value when you resize your term) so its very efficient. I like pretty-output in my shells and have experimented with several ways to output a line the width of the screen using a minimal amount of code. This is like version 9,000 lol.

This function is what I use, though when using colors or other terminal features I create separate functions that call this one, since this is the lowest level type of function. It might be better named printl(), but since I use it so much it's more optimal to have the name contain less chars (both for my programming and for the internal workings).

If you do use terminal escapes this will reset to default.

tput sgr0

For implementation ideas, check my

http://www.askapache.com/linux-unix/bash_profile-functions-advanced-shell.html

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println() {echo -n -e "\e[038;05;${2:-255}m";printf "%$(tput cols)s"|sed "s/ /${1:-=}/g"}
2011-01-09 18:08:18
User: joedhon
Functions: printf sed
Tags: sed tput printf
0
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Print a row of characters across the terminal

function for .bash_aliases that prints a line of the character of your choice in the color of your choice across the terminal.

Default character is "=", default color is white.

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jot -b '#' -s '' $COLUMNS
2010-04-13 22:03:39
User: dennisw
Tags: tr tput printf
-1
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Print a row of characters across the terminal

For BSD-based systems, including OS X, that don't have seq.

This version provides a default using tput in case $COLUMNS is not set:

jot -b '#' -s '' ${COLUMNS:-$(tput cols)}
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