perl: sprintf for element in list - perl

Question

I've been really confused about this, I'm trying to create a big matrix of numbers and I want to use sprintf with perl to have a nicer output. I'm trying to use sprintf like so
my $x = 0;
my $y = 0;
for ($x=1; $x<=$steps; $y++) { # loop through lines
for ($y=0; $y<=$distances; $y++) {
my $format = sprintf ("%s",$matrix[$x][$y]);
but this is really doing my head in, as I am looping through all the values of $x and $y and getting their combinations. So I am not sure if I'm meant to use more formatting arguments like so
my $format = sprintf ("%s%s%s",$matrix[$x][$y]);
(of course this is giving me compilation errors as it's not right)
But when I only use one argument, I can't put spaces in between my columns :/ Can somebody explain what's happening? I really don't understand what I'm meant to do to get the formatting nice. I'm looking to just align the columns and have a couple of whitespaces between them. Thank you all so much.

Answer 1

I would be thinking in terms of using map, as a way to display every element:
#!/usr/bin/env perl
use strict;
use warnings;
my #matrix = ( [1,2,3,4],
[5,6,7,8],
[9,10,11,12], );
print join ("\n", map { join ( "\t", #$_ ) } #matrix );
This is formatting on tab-stops, rather than fixed width columns, and outputs:
1 2 3 4
5 6 7 8
9 10 11 12
If you particularly wanted sprintf though:
foreach my $row ( #matrix ) {
print map { sprintf("%5s", $_) } #$row,"\n";
}
(5 columns wide).
In each of these, I'm working on whole rows - that only really applies though, if I'm right about the assumptions I've made about which elements you're displaying.
At a very basic level - your code could work as:
#!/usr/bin/env perl
use strict;
use warnings;
my #matrix = ( [ 1, 2, 3, 4 ],
[ 5, 6, 7, 8 ],
[ 9, 10, 11, 12 ], );
my $steps = 2;
my $distances = 3;
for ( my $x = 1; $x <= $steps; $x++ ) { # loop through lines
for ( my $y = 0; $y <= $distances; $y++ ) {
printf( "%5s", $matrix[$x][$y] );
}
print "\n";
}
Although note - that will only work with equal numbers of columns. You could, however, do something like:
#!/usr/bin/env perl
use strict;
use warnings;
my #matrix = ( [ 1, 2, ],
[ 3, 4, 5, ],
[ 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 ], );
my $steps = 2;
my $distances = 3;
for ( my $x = 1; $x <= $steps; $x++ ) { # loop through lines
for ( my $y = 0; $y <= $distances; $y++ ) {
printf( "%5s", $matrix[$x][$y] // '' );
}
print "\n";
}
Which omits the first row (because you set $x to 1), and iterates up to 4 columns:
3 4 5
6 7 8 9
This omits the extra values on the last line, and uses // to test if the cell is empty or not.

Answer 2

for my $row (#matrix) {
my $format = join(' ', ('%5.2f') x #$row)."\n";
printf($format, #$row);
}
If all rows have the same number of columns, you could calculate the format once.
if (#matrix) {
my $format = join(' ', ('%5.2f') x #{$matrix[0]})."\n";
for my $row (#matrix) {
printf($format, #$row);
}
}
If the size of the columns isn't unknown in advance, you'll need to need to perform the following in order:
Format the cells (if needed),
Find the length of the largest cell of each column, then
Print out the matrix with padding.
The following assumes every row of the matrix is the same length.
use List::Util qw( max );
if (#matrix) {
for my $row (#matrix) {
$_ = sprinf('%.2f', $_) for #$row;
}
my $num_cols = #{$matrix[0]};
my #col_sizes = (0) x $num_cols;
for my $row (#matrix) {
$col_sizes[$x] = max(0, $col_sizes[$x], $row->[$x]);
}
my $format = join(' ', map { "%$_s" } #col_sizes)."\n";
for my $row (#matrix) {
printf($format, #$row);
}
}