用printf的空格扩展变量

Question

My script constructs variables into a given order depending on a table to be printed. But if there are any spaces in the end string, printf treats it as a separate column. Imagine the following:

one=1
two="2 3"
all="$one $two"
format="%5s%5s"
printf $format $all

How can the printf command understand the variables passed in $all properly? I know they are being expanded and that printf is seeing it just as a single string, but I can't find a way to get it to work where there are spaces in a variable like there are in $four.

Answer 1

It can't, as written. You can't selectively treat some spaces as word splitting and others as not in a parameter expansion. You can, however, use an array to preserve the non-word-splitting spaces.

one=1
two="2 3"
all=( "$one" "$two" )
format="%5s%5s"
printf "$format" "${all[@]}"

Answer 2

You should store the two values in an array rather than a string.

one=1
two="2 3"
all=("$one" "$two") # array with 2 elements
format="%5s%5s"
printf "$format" "${all[@]}" # quoting the array expansion properly passes two args