Print equal-width columns in C using printf formatting

Question

I would like to print columns using printf in C. I wrote this code:

#include <stdio.h>

void printme(char *txt1, char *txt2, char *txt3)
{
    printf("TXT1: %9s TXT2 %9s TXT3 %9s\n", txt1, txt2, txt3);
}


int main()
{
    printme("a","bbbbbbbeeeeebbbbb","e");
    printme("aaaaaaaa","bbbbbbbbbbbb","abcde");
    return 0;
}

It works but I have such output:

TXT1:         a TXT2 bbbbbbbeeeeebbbbb TXT3         e
TXT1:  aaaaaaaa TXT2 bbbbbbbbbbbb TXT3     abcde

So the columns are not equal-width. Basicly, I would like to make it like this, that no matter how long is text in my argument, my function would ALWAYS print out a nice formatted columns. The question is: how can I do this?

By saing nice I meant that no matter how long text I pass to my printing function, it will always print out equal-width columns, for example:

I have this output that looks like this:

a         cd`           fg           ij  
a         cd             fg           ij  
a         cd             fg           ij  
ab         cd             fg           ij  
ab         cd             fg           i j   
ab         cd             fg           ij  
ab         cd             fg           ij  
ab         cde             fgh         ij  
ab         cde             fgh         ij  

I want it to look like this (no matter how long my text arguments will be):

a         cd`           fg           ij  
a         cd            fg           ij  
a         cd            fg           ij  
ab        cd            fg           ij  
ab        cd            fg           ij   
ab        cd            fg           ij  
ab        cd            fg           ij  
ab        cde           fgh          ij  
ab        cde           fgh          ij    

Answer 1

If you want the strings to be truncated if they're larger than the column width, then you can just add a precision for the string format specification:

printf("TXT1: %9.9s TXT2 %9.9s TXT3 %9.9s\n", txt1, txt2, txt3);

With that printf(), the output of your example program looks like:

TXT1:         a TXT2 bbbbbbbee TXT3         e
TXT1:  aaaaaaaa TXT2 bbbbbbbbb TXT3     abcde