How to align print output

[learingperl01]

Hello everyone wondering if someone could please give me an example on how I would go about aligning text output so that columns are always aligned x numbers of ....... or spaces after the last entry. I have tried \t but the problem is when a previous column is too long it will not tab out correctly. Like the example below. it would be great if someone could give me an example to align text with white space but periods will do.

thanks for the help in advance!!

Example
aaaaa...............a
bbb...................b
ccccccccc.........c

 

[brigmar]

sprintf -

http://perldoc.perl.org/functions/sprintf.html

printf -

http://perldoc.perl.org/functions/printf.html

printf( "%-20s %4d\n", 'Thing', 5);

 

[learingperl01]

brigmar that worked thats for the help