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# formline

Perl 5 version 18.2 documentation
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# formline

Perl functions A-Z | Perl functions by category | The 'perlfunc' manpage

- formline PICTURE,LIST

  This is an internal function used by `format`s, though you may call it, too. It formats (see perlform) a list of values according to the contents of PICTURE, placing the output into the format output accumulator, `$^A` (or `$ACCUMULATOR` in English). Eventually, when a `write` is done, the contents of `$^A` are written to some filehandle. You could also read `$^A` and then set `$^A` back to `""` . Note that a format typically does one `formline` per line of form, but the `formline` function itself doesn't care how many newlines are embedded in the PICTURE. This means that the `~` and `~~` tokens treat the entire PICTURE as a single line. You may therefore need to use multiple formlines to implement a single record format, just like the `format` compiler.

  Be careful if you put double quotes around the picture, because an `@` character may be taken to mean the beginning of an array name. `formline` always returns true. See perlform for other examples.

  If you are trying to use this instead of `write` to capture the output, you may find it easier to open a filehandle to a scalar (`open $fh, ">", \$output` ) and write to that instead.