Bash printf formatting not working!

Question

My script is:

#!/bin/bash
num1=32.55
num2=145.958
printf "%5.2f\n" $num1
printf "%5.2f\n" $num2

The output is:

32.55
145.96

Instead of:

   32.55
  145.96

What's going on? If it's any help, I'm using Fedora 27 Beta with Linux Kernel 4.13.8-300.fc27.x86_64

Answer 1

The width specifier is for all characters including the decimal point and fraction. Your numbers already have at least 5 characters, so...

$ printf "%8.2f\n" 32.55
   32.55