C printf char more than or equal to 8 character in a row manner

Question

if (namelist==NULL)
{
   namelist=(char**)malloc(sizeof(char**));
   namelist[i]=name;
}
else
{
   namelist=(char**)realloc(namelist,(i+1)*sizeof(char**));
   namelist[i]=name;
}

for(i=0;i<count;i++)
{
   printf("%s\t\t%s\n",namelist[i],namelist[i]);
}

The problem is if I enter "abcdefg", "abcdefgh" and "abc" as input, I will get

abcdefg          abcdefg
abcdefgh                    abcdefgh
abc              abc

Is there any way to get the second "abcdefgh" to get in line as the second "abcdefg" and "abc"?

Answer 1

stop using TAB characters (\t) as separators, use proper format specifications instead, if you want your strings to start at 20th column, write:

printf( "%-20s%s", namelist[i],namelist[i]);