a function to create a box of '=' characters around a given string.

box() { t="$1xxxx";c=${2:-=}; echo ${t//?/$c}; echo "$c $1 $c"; echo ${t//?/$c}; }

First argument: string to put a box around. Second argument: character to use for box (default is '=') Same as command #4948, but shorter, and without the utility function.

Sample Output

$ box 'sample box'
==============
= sample box =
==============

$ box 'the function foo() takes arguments "bar" and "baz", returns "floon"' '#'
#######################################################################
# the function foo() takes arguments "bar" and "baz", returns "floon" #
#######################################################################

By: bartonski

2010-02-26 13:17:12

echo

2 Alternatives + Submit Alt

a function to create a box of '=' characters around a given string.

First argument: string to put a box around. Second argument: character to use for box (default is '=') Same as command #4962, cleaned up, shortened, and more efficient. Now a ' * ' can be used as the box character, and the variables get unset so they don't mess with anything else you might have. They marked c++ as a function for this command, but I'm not sure why. Must be a bug. Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
$box "Testing the box function"
============================
= Testing the box function =
============================

$box "Testing the box function" \*
****************************
* Testing the box function *
****************************
```
2

box(){ c=${2-=}; l=$c$c${1//?/$c}$c$c; echo -e "$l\n$c $1 $c\n$l"; unset c l;}

mightybs · 2010-02-26 17:14:52 4
a function to create a box of '=' characters around a given string.

The function 'box' takes either one or two arguments. The first argument is a line of text to be boxed, the second argument (optional) is a character to use to draw the box. By default, the drawing character will be '='. The function 'n()' is a helper function used to draw the upper and lower lines of the box, its arguments are a length, and an character to print. (I used 'n' because 'line', 'ln' and 'l' are all commonly used) Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
$ box 'sample box'
==============
= sample box =
==============

$ box 'the function foo() takes arguments "bar" and "baz", returns "floon"' '#'
#######################################################################
# the function foo() takes arguments "bar" and "baz", returns "floon" #
#######################################################################
```
1

box() { l=${#1}+4;x=${2:-=};n $l $x; echo "$x $1 $x"; n $l $x; }; n() { for (( i=0; $i<$1; i=$i+1)); do printf $2; done; printf "\n"; }

bartonski · 2010-02-26 06:56:59 4

What Others Think

I like this one, thanks. By changing the "=" to a "#" its a nice way to add comments to a file: box "My comments" >> file

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projack · 29 weeks and 3 days ago

yeneba6574 · 13 weeks and 5 days ago

What do you think?

Any thoughts on this command? Does it work on your machine? Can you do the same thing with only 14 characters?

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