Re: Formatting Strings Without Interpolating Whitespace

[Xiong]

Yes. Not complex.

    # lib/Anti/Tidy.pm
    package Anti::Tidy;
    
    use overload                    # Overload Perl operations
        '""'    => \&_stringify,
    ;
    
    sub new { return bless {}, shift };
    
    sub _stringify { 
        my $self = shift;
        for ( $self->{-string} ) {
            s/[\t\n]//gs;
            s/\\t/\t/g;
            s/\\n/\n/g;
        };
        return $self;
    };
    
    sub put_string {
        my $self = shift;
        $self->{-string} = shift;
        return $self;
    };
    
    # bin/yourscript.pl
    use Anti::Tidy;
    
    my $uglyfruit = Anti::Tidy->new;
    $uglyfruit->put_string('Hideous \t big old string
       with embedded         hard tabs and 
       hard newlines         to be ignored\n
       but with escape \t sequences to be \n expanded.');
    say $uglyfruit;

This code is totally untested and may or may not work, or may explode, scattering wheels and cogs across your bench. You may want to fool with the regexes to handle spaces on either side of your tabs and newlines of either persuation.

But this should do the trick. I assume no responsibility for the result.