... looks messy when it is piped into a logfile. Is there anything I can do to improve this, maybe with a run over the logfile that replaces the tabs with spaces? I once wrote this for a different purpose, ...
for pkg in $INSTALLED
do
[ -f $pkg/receipt ] || continue
. $pkg/receipt
printf "%s %$((25-${#PACKAGE}))s" "$PACKAGE" >> $COPY_PATH/$1/$1.txt
printf "%s %$((18-${#VERSION}))s" "$VERSION" >> $COPY_PATH/$1/$1.txt
echo "$CATEGORY" >> $COPY_PATH/$1/$1.txt
packages=$(($packages+1))
done
... the output of which looks neat. But it isn't suitable here.