This question is often asked in the various Unix and Linux forums. For example, suppose you want to create a string of 50 asterisks other than
str="***********************************"
Here are some of the ways I have come across over the years.
perl -e 'print "*"x50'
ruby -e 'puts "*"*50'
awk 'BEGIN { while (a++<50) s=s "x"; print s }'
printf '%*s' "50" ' ' | tr ' ' "*"
echo "*****" | sed 's/.*/&&&&&&&&&&/'
The following works for gawk but not oawk.
echo | awk NF=51 OFS=*
