perl -Mstrict -MList::Util=max -e 'my @a=@ARGV;my $max=max map { length } @a; my $col = 0; while(my $a = shift @a) { $col+=(1+$max); if ($col >= 80) { $col = (1+$max); print "\n" } print $a." "x(1+$max-length($a))} print "\n"' ..
.

#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use List::Util qw(max);

my $TERMWIDTH=80;
open(FILE, "bla");
my @a=<FILE>;
close(FILE);
chomp(@a);

my $max=max map { length } @a;
my $col = 0;
while(my $a = shift @a) {
        $col+=(1+$max);
        if ($col >= $TERMWIDTH) {
                $col = (1+$max);
                print "\n";
        }
        print $a." "x(1+$max-length($a));
}
print "\n";