Re: How do I print formatted text to a scalar instead of a filehandle?

in reply to How do I print formatted text to a scalar instead of a filehandle?

tie won't work, unfortunately. Here's a little trick that'll let you fudge it, with thanks to runrig's snippet for the inspiration/pointer and perldoc for the details.

### see perldocs perlvar, perlform, and formline for more details
my $output;
my %hash = (one => 1, two => 2, three => 3);

# create a format picture for use with formline
my $picture = '@<<<<<<<<< @##' . $/;

foreach my $key (keys %hash) {
  # clear out the special variable $^A ("$ACCUMULATOR")
  $^A = '';
  # again, see perldoc formline for details
  formline($picture,$key,$hash{$key});
  # add the contents of $^A to $output
  $output .= $^A;
}

print $output;
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the output:

one          1
two          2
three        3
[download]

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