Here are some experiments with format. It behaves in a rather weird fashion when eval'ed. It seems to replace all the 'template variables' in the format by their actual values when the evaluation is called. The (kludgy) workaround I found is to eval on each iteration of the for $i(0..9)

The use of the eval is to be able to get the longest name of the list and construct the format according to it

my $i;
my $format = "format STDOUT =\n"
             . '@>>> '
             . '@' . '<' x ($longest + 3)
             . " @<<<<\n"
             . '$i, $results[$i]->[0], $results[$i]->[1]'
             . "\n.\n";

print $format;
eval $format;
die $@ if $@;

for $i (0..9) {
    write;
}
[download]

(I think that there should be a better way to do the above though)

The most straightforward approach of using format in this script would be the following:

my $i;

format STDOUT_TOP=
Rank Name                  Posts
--------------------------------
.
format STDOUT =
@||| @<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< @<<<<
$i, $results[$i]->[0], $results[$i]->[1]
.

for $i (0..9) {
    write;
}
[download]

But in a nicer and more obfuscation prone style, one could prefer

my $picture = '@||| @' . '<' x $longest . "@<<<<\n";
for my $i (0..9) {
    formline($picture, $i, $results[$i]->[0], $results[$i]->[1]);
}
print $^A; # use English; print $ACCUMULATOR;
[download]

Eeek!

Cheers,
briac