comment on

In the below piece of code, the newlines between the lines of the poems ( $cookie ) are ignored. How do I get the format to preserve them ? Is there any way to get the desired output without having to eval the format ?

#!/bin/env perl -w
use strict;

my $cookie="Climb the mountains\nand get their good tidings.\nNature's
+ peace will flow into you\nas sunshine flows into trees.\n";
my $author="-John Muir\n";
$: = "- ";
format STDOUT =
        @|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
        "------------------------------------------------"
~~     ^<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
        $cookie
        @||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
        $author
        @|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
        "------------------------------------------------"
.
write STDOUT;
[download]

The $: line is in there because perldoc says that it controls the characters on which format is allowed to split the line. However, it doesn't seem to prevent newlines being ignored if the lines in question are smaller than what the format will allow in a single line.

In the below fragment, the output comes out like this --

                
        ------------------------------------------------
        Climb the mountains and get their good tidings.
        Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine
        flows into trees.
                                 -John Muir
        ------------------------------------------------
[download]

I would like it to be this --

                
        ------------------------------------------------
        Climb the mountains
        and get their good tidings.
        Nature's peace will flow into you
        as sunshine flows into trees.
                                 -John Muir
        ------------------------------------------------
[download]

In reply to Multi-line Format problem by nr0mx

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