Format Column Width with Printf

Question

I am attempting to merge three files using 'paste' and 'awk'. However, the columns are not adjusting to the longest string of characters. All files are formatted in the same manner as below.

• F gge0001x
• D 12-30-2006
• T 14:15:20
• S a69
• B 15.8
• M gge06001
• P 30.1

Below is my faulty code.

$ paste <(awk '{print $1}' lineid) <
(awk '{printf("%-13.10s\n", $1)}' gge0001x) <
(awk '{printf("%-13.10s\n", $1)}' gge0001y) <
(awk '{printf("%-13.10s\n", $1)}' gge0001z)

This code results in misaligned columns as pictured below.

---

Input File 1

F 
D 
T 
S 
B 
M 
P  
Q  
R  
U  
X 
A    
G    
H  
O  
C  
K  
W  
L  

Input File 2

gge0006x
12-30-2006
14:05:23
a69
15.4
gge06001
30.8 
19.2 
1006.2 
1012.7 
36.2
38.994   
107.71   
8.411 
37.084 
7.537 
28.198 
212.52 
68.1

Input File 3

gge0006y
12-30-2006 
14:05:55
a69
15.3
gge06001
30.6 
21.1 
1006.6 
1014.6 
36.1
38.994   
107.71   
8.433 
36.705 
7.621 
27.623 
210.51 
68 

Input File 4

gge0006z
12-30-2006
14:06:28
a69
15.7
gge06001
30.3 
23.5 
1008 
1014.1 
36.6
38.994   
107.71   
8.434 
36.508 
7.546 
27.574 
208.08 
67.6 

---

Results for paste file1 file2 file3 file4 | column -t

Answer 1

Your input files have DOS \r\n line endings. Remove the carriage returns with the dos2unix command or with sed -i 's/\r$//'

Answer 2

The command paste separate entries with tabs, which are then interpreted as a variable number of spaces upon display. If your input is already padded with whitespace, you may try deleting tabs from the output of paste, with | tr -d '\t', or turning each tab into a single space,with| tr '\t' ' ' (on my system, the first can be achieved using paste -d '', but I don't know whether this is portable, and the second can be achieved with paste -d ' '; telling paste to use spaces as delimiters).