Using tput with make

Question

I am looking to do some formatting of the output from my makefile using tput. An example: if you simply type

echo $(printf '%*s' "${COLUMNS:-$(tput cols)}" '' | tr ' ' –)

as a command in your shell it will output a nice line spanning the entire width of your terminal window.

I am wondering if there's any way to carry this over in a makefile? The following only produces a blank line:

lineTest:
    @echo $$( printf '%*s' "${COLUMNS:-$(tput cols)}" '' | tr ' ' – )

Definitely a silly question, but please do chime in if you happen to know.

What shell are you running? – Tripp Kinetics Apr 11 '18 at 04:14 — Tripp Kinetics, Apr 11 '18 at 04:14
I currently use Z shell. – Audun Olsen Apr 11 '18 at 05:44 — Audun Olsen, Apr 11 '18 at 05:44

MadScientist · Accepted Answer · 2018-04-11T19:28:57.003

4

You have to escape ALL the $ you want to pass to make. You only escaped the first one. Also I don't know why you're invoking printf in a subshell then echoing the results...??

This works for me:

lineTest:
        @printf '%*s\n' "$${COLUMNS:-$$(tput cols)}" '' | tr ' ' -

I should point out, this won't work reliably if you invoke make with parallel builds enabled, because in parallel mode not all of the jobs get access to the terminal.

edited Apr 11 '18 at 19:28

answered Apr 11 '18 at 19:21

MadScientist

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In makefiles I define the columns like this: ```# Define Terminal Info``` ```COLUMNS := $(shell tput cols)``` – MERM Apr 07 '23 at 14:35

Using tput with make

1 Answers1