thanks... but parameters expansions and printf builtin works differently about it...
$ locale | grep LC_CTYPE
LC_CTYPE="en_US.UTF-8"
$ a=eèèèe
$ b=eeeee
$ echo ${#a}
5
$ echo ${#b}
5
$ printf "*%-10s*" $a
*eèèèe *
$ printf "*%-10s*" $b
*eeeee *
is it ok?
