Printing a Full-Width Line in Bash

Sometimes in the terminal you want a visual separator, like a line that stretches across the entire width of your screen. It makes logs, scripts, and output much easier to read.

You can generate a line that automatically matches your terminal width using this little Bash snippet.

First, create the line:

line=$(yes ─ | head -n$(tput cols) | tr -d '\n')

How it works:

• tput cols gets the current width of your terminal in characters.

• yes ─ repeats the ─ character endlessly.

• head -n$(tput cols) limits it to exactly the number of characters your terminal can fit.

• tr -d '\n' removes the newlines, leaving a continuous line.

Next, print it in bold green (or change the color to whatever you like):

printf "\e[1m\e[92m$line\x1b[39;49;00m\n"

That prints a clean line across the screen the exact width of the terminal.

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Why This Is Useful

• Use it as a separator in shell scripts.

• Highlight sections in logs.

• Add visual flair to status outputs or menus.

And since it uses tput cols, it will adapt to whatever size your terminal is.