From: Gavin Sinclair <gsinclair@...>
Date: 2003-10-28T17:32:13+09:00
Subject: Formatting (ANSI) highlighted strings

Hi folks,

Using the 'text/highlight' package on RubyForge, you can emit coloured
strings to the console like so:

   s = "string".bold.red.on_white

Great.  Now if I want to format that using:

  printf "%-10s goes here\n", s

I'm not going to get (in B&W)

  string     goes here

Rather

  string goes here

Because

  s.size > 10      # It contains escape sequences to enact colours.

even though it only contains 6 printable characters.


So, I don't think there's any way I can use printf to do this kind of
formatting (modifying s.size doesn't change anything).

Does anyone have any alternative, or a bright idea?

Thanks,
Gavin