How can I multiply a character N times using bash?

Question

I just want to echo spaces until it fills the size of the terminal. I can just write spaces between the quotation marks but it takes time and also it looks bad.

I tried simple things like

a=" "*100 or a=(" "*100) & echo $a

but it won't work. Is there any way like Space(100) or a better way than typing spaces.

Answer 1

Like this, using Perl:

perl -sE 'say " " x $col' -- -col=$COLUMNS

Or the most simple:

printf '%*s' $COLUMNS " "

The variable $COLUMNS is the number of columns in your shell.