Center text on the screen

[Robert Fisher_1]

Hi,

Does anyone have an example of an easy way to center
text messages on a terminal? I would like to easily center menu titles without having to count spaces.

Thanks in advance for any ideas,
Bob

[A. Clay Stephenson · Accepted solution]

Hi Bob:

I ain't got one but it shouldn't be too difficult to whup one up.

#!/usr/bin/sh


centerit()
{
if [[ ${#} -lt 1 ]]
then
return 255
fi
XS=${1}
shift
while [[ ${#} -ge 1 ]]
do
XS="${XS} ${1}"
shift
done
XPOS=$((($(tput cols) - ${#XS}) / 2))
XI=0
while [[ ${XI} -lt ${XPOS} ]]
do
echo " \c"
XI=$((${XI} + 1))
done
echo "${XS}"
return 0
}

#example
centerit "This is a test"
# or
centerit This is a test


Note that this uses tput cols to get the screen width so it should work on any terminal.
If I didn't miss any typo's then this guy should also work if you quote the args (suggested) or not.

[H.Merijn Brand (procura]

# perl -e'$msg="@ARGV";printf"%*s%s\n",(($ENV{COLUMNS}||80)-length$msg)/2,"",$msg' Your message

Enjoy, have FUN! H.Merijn

[A. Clay Stephenson]

One other thing Bob, since you mentioned menu titles, you might want to add something like tput smso's tput rmso's around your titles to make them stand out. (smso/rmso start standout mode; remove standout mode).

[James R. Ferguson]

Hi Bob:

Here's a crude example:

#!/usr/bin/sh
MSG="This message is centered!"
MSZ=${#MSG}
COL=`echo "(80-${MSZ})/2"|bc`
clear
tput cup 12 ${COL}
echo ${MSG}
tput cup 23 0
exit 0

Regards!

...JRF...

[Robert Fisher_1]

Thanks guys. JRF, I should have stated that I only needed to center the text horizontally. Procura, the perl was neat! I am going to have to learn it. A. Clay, I followed your advice and made a second function that does a tput smso and a tput rmso.

Thanks,
Bob