On Fri, Mar 02, 2007 at 12:39:13AM +0900, Peter Bailey wrote:
> This is a pretty simple question. I need to do a "printf" of some
> numbers inside a string. I just can't figure out how to express a long
> string that has that "printf" inside it, because the printf statement
> itself has quotes, too.

I think what you were trying to do is:

  number = "3"
  puts "stuff, #{sprintf "%.3d", number}"

Note that sprintf(..) is like printf(..) but returns the result as a string
value, rather than sending it to stdout. Then #{} lets you insert an
arbitary expression inside another string.

But as pointed out by others, you can do this in one go as

  printf "stuff, %.3d\n", number

HTH,

Brian.