title: Constant number of characters in floating point number in bash
body: <p>I need to do some "pretty" formatting of numbers with bash. I have a string of comma separated floating point numbers in scientific format (ie. either 3.14159 or 1.0601e-12) and I need to create a comma separated list where all numbers have as many characters. It isn't very important whether spaces or zeros are used for filling (ie. '    3.14' and '3.140000' both work). I tried using printf with "%.12f", but that of course won't work. I'm out of ideas (except for working on a character level, but that seems overly complicated)</p>
  
  <p>I really appreciate the help.</p>