title: text formating to specific width
body: <p>I wrote a script to show down- and up-speed of my notebook with polybar. The problem I run into is to put the output of <code>echo</code> in formation.</p>
  <p>ATM my output looks like this (bash script loops in terminal) ...</p>
  <pre><code>WLAN0: ⬇️ 14 MiB/s ⬆️ 16 KiB/s
  WLAN0: ⬇️ 60 B/s ⬆️ 0 B/s
  WLAN0: ⬇️ 120 B/s ⬆️ 120 B/s
  </code></pre>
  <p>But I want it lined up, like this ...</p>
  <pre><code>WLAN0: ⬇️ 14 MiB/s  ⬆️ 16 KiB/s
  WLAN0: ⬇️ 60 B/s    ⬆️ 0 B/s
  WLAN0: ⬇️ 120 B/s   ⬆️ 120 B/s
  </code></pre>
  <p>The essence of my code is the following simplified line ...</p>
  <pre><code>echo &quot;yada: ⬇️ $string1 ⬆️ $string2&quot;
  </code></pre>
  <p>The variables include a number and text (up to 10 chars max) each, depending on transfer speed.</p>
  <p>So there should be at least 12 static fields between the two <em>emoji</em>.
  But I have no clue how and I am hoping you can explain to me how to format some kind of variables width, with <code>printf</code> I assume.</p>