[SOLVED] indent output of bash script

Issue

I am writing a piece of code that has several outputs. The part where I output stuff has two functions, the first of which outputs some indented message. I would like the second function to print something starting from the indentation level of the previous output. So the second function should be aware of the indentation level of the first. How do I achieve this?

    outputfunction1
    outputfunction2

as opposed to

    outputfunction1
outputfunction2

Thanks everyone

Solution

Here a fun (but terrible) idea.

#!/bin/sh                                                    

function1() { printf '\t\toutputfunction1\n'; }                
function2() { echo bar; }                                      
indent (){                                                     
        indent=$(printf '%s' "$(for ((i=$1; $i>0; i--)); do printf '\t'; done)")                                               
        shift                                                  
        $@ | sed "s/^/$indent/"                                
}                                                              

get_indent() {                                                 
        # Call a function and return the indentation of the last line.
        $@ | awk '1; END{ exit( match($0, "[^\t]") -1 )}'    
}                                                              


get_indent function1                                           
indent $? function2

Note that this relies on "indent" being defined as number of hard tabs. I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to do this for arbitrary whitespace.

Answered By - William Pursell

Answer Checked By - Mildred Charles (WPSolving Admin)