Bash Printf -- Pretty, Pretty Numbers

A repeated need I've encountered is a need to format a numeric with leading zeros, similar to the common form used in C.  Typically, I take a over-complicated approach of comparing the number to >100 or >10 and pre-pending leading zeros.

After investigating alternative approaches with good 'ole Google, the better approach is shown below;


$ cat /tmp/go 
#!/bin/bash

for i in `seq 100`; do
  N=$(printf %03d $i)
  echo $N
done

Cheers.