Hi, I am trying to use the printf with awk to send some data to print. Here is the statement in my script: echo "$i $state $q_date $project $title" | awk '{ printf "%-11s%-2s%-7s%-17s%-60s\n", $1, $2, $3, $4, $5 }' >>$tempdir/$Manager.msg The problem is that I am trying align the fields - which is OK up to $4, but because the variable $title is several words so the utility only sees the first word in $title and prints it. I tried everything like \"$title\" '$title' ${title} nothing works... can someone help! Please!! My script is overdue.

You can use different field separator instead of the default one. Also you can do something like: Set A=`"$i $state $q_date $project" | awk '{ printf "%-11s%-2s%-7s%-17s%-60s\n", $1, $2, $3, $4}'` echo $A $title >>$tempdir/$Manager.msg Danny

Thanks Danny, I will try that. camin