How to generate a border around a string in Bash shell script?

Question

Is there a way to generate a border around a given string in Bash using characters like - and | and automatically expand to the length of the string? The given string should not include EOF sequences and be removed when processed.

echo "------------------"
echo "| External Drive |"
echo "------------------"

Answer 1

I found a solution on another Stack Exchange site which works using sed. It had different wording for the question.

border()
{
    title="| $1 |"
    edge=$(echo "$title" | sed 's/./-/g')
    echo "$edge"
    echo "$title"
    echo "$edge"
}

border "External Drive"

results

------------------
| External Drive |
------------------

Answer 2

Little function that does it, without external tools:

border () {
    local str="$*"      # Put all arguments into single string
    local len=${#str}
    local i
    for ((i = 0; i < len + 4; ++i)); do
        printf '-'
    done
    printf '\n| %s |\n' "$str"
    for ((i = 0; i < len + 4; ++i)); do
        printf '-'
    done
    echo
}

Once this is sourced by, for example, adding it to your .bashrc, it can be called without quoting:

$ border multiple words
------------------
| multiple words |
------------------