So I want to adjust the length of string1. I do this by inserting a spacer in string1 who's length is calculated from the length of string2:
local diff spacer
(( diff = $#string2 - 76 ))
for (( dd=1; dd<diff; dd++ )); do spacer+=' '; done
... # spacer will be incorporated into string1, not shown.
It works fine, but I'll bet there's a less laborious way -- some way of creating 'spacer' with 'diff' number of spaces without the for loop. I could make 'spacer' too long and then cut it at an index [diff], but I doubt that's as simple as it could be. I know it's there, I just can't quite remember.