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1999-04-17
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NAME
perlform - Perl formats
DESCRIPTION
Perl has a mechanism to help you generate simple reports and
charts. To facilitate this, Perl helps you code up your output
page close to how it will look when it's printed. It can keep
track of things like how many lines are on a page, what page
you're on, when to print page headers, etc. Keywords are
borrowed from FORTRAN: format() to declare and write() to
execute; see their entries in the perlfunc manpage. Fortunately,
the layout is much more legible, more like BASIC's PRINT USING
statement. Think of it as a poor man's nroff(1).
Formats, like packages and subroutines, are declared rather than
executed, so they may occur at any point in your program.
(Usually it's best to keep them all together though.) They have
their own namespace apart from all the other "types" in Perl.
This means that if you have a function named "Foo", it is not
the same thing as having a format named "Foo". However, the
default name for the format associated with a given filehandle
is the same as the name of the filehandle. Thus, the default
format for STDOUT is named "STDOUT", and the default format for
filehandle TEMP is named "TEMP". They just look the same. They
aren't.
Output record formats are declared as follows:
format NAME =
FORMLIST
.
If name is omitted, format "STDOUT" is defined. FORMLIST
consists of a sequence of lines, each of which may be one of
three types:
1. A comment, indicated by putting a '#' in the first column.
2. A "picture" line giving the format for one output line.
3. An argument line supplying values to plug into the previous
picture line.
Picture lines are printed exactly as they look, except for
certain fields that substitute values into the line. Each field
in a picture line starts with either "@" (at) or "^" (caret).
These lines do not undergo any kind of variable interpolation.
The at field (not to be confused with the array marker @) is the
normal kind of field; the other kind, caret fields, are used to
do rudimentary multi-line text block filling. The length of the
field is supplied by padding out the field with multiple "<",
">", or "|" characters to specify, respectively, left
justification, right justification, or centering. If the
variable would exceed the width specified, it is truncated.
As an alternate form of right justification, you may also use
"#" characters (with an optional ".") to specify a numeric
field. This way you can line up the decimal points. If any value
supplied for these fields contains a newline, only the text up
to the newline is printed. Finally, the special field "@*" can
be used for printing multi-line, nontruncated values; it should
appear by itself on a line.
The values are specified on the following line in the same order
as the picture fields. The expressions providing the values
should be separated by commas. The expressions are all evaluated
in a list context before the line is processed, so a single list
expression could produce multiple list elements. The expressions
may be spread out to more than one line if enclosed in braces.
If so, the opening brace must be the first token on the first
line. If an expression evaluates to a number with a decimal
part, and if the corresponding picture specifies that the
decimal part should appear in the output (that is, any picture
except multiple "#" characters without an embedded "."), the
character used for the decimal point is always determined by the
current LC_NUMERIC locale. This means that, if, for example, the
run-time environment happens to specify a German locale, ","
will be used instead of the default ".". See the perllocale
manpage and the section on "WARNINGS" for more information.
Picture fields that begin with ^ rather than @ are treated
specially. With a # field, the field is blanked out if the value
is undefined. For other field types, the caret enables a kind of
fill mode. Instead of an arbitrary expression, the value
supplied must be a scalar variable name that contains a text
string. Perl puts as much text as it can into the field, and
then chops off the front of the string so that the next time the
variable is referenced, more of the text can be printed. (Yes,
this means that the variable itself is altered during execution
of the write() call, and is not returned.) Normally you would
use a sequence of fields in a vertical stack to print out a
block of text. You might wish to end the final field with the
text "...", which will appear in the output if the text was too
long to appear in its entirety. You can change which characters
are legal to break on by changing the variable `$:' (that's
$FORMAT_LINE_BREAK_CHARACTERS if you're using the English
module) to a list of the desired characters.
Using caret fields can produce variable length records. If the
text to be formatted is short, you can suppress blank lines by
putting a "~" (tilde) character anywhere in the line. The tilde
will be translated to a space upon output. If you put a second
tilde contiguous to the first, the line will be repeated until
all the fields on the line are exhausted. (If you use a field of
the at variety, the expression you supply had better not give
the same value every time forever!)
Top-of-form processing is by default handled by a format with
the same name as the current filehandle with "_TOP" concatenated
to it. It's triggered at the top of each page. See the "write"
entry in the perlfunc manpage.
Examples:
# a report on the /etc/passwd file
format STDOUT_TOP =
Passwd File
Name Login Office Uid Gid Home
------------------------------------------------------------------
.
format STDOUT =
@<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< @||||||| @<<<<<<@>>>> @>>>> @<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
$name, $login, $office,$uid,$gid, $home
.
# a report from a bug report form
format STDOUT_TOP =
Bug Reports
@<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< @||| @>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
$system, $%, $date
------------------------------------------------------------------
.
format STDOUT =
Subject: @<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
$subject
Index: @<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< ^<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
$index, $description
Priority: @<<<<<<<<<< Date: @<<<<<<< ^<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
$priority, $date, $description
From: @<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< ^<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
$from, $description
Assigned to: @<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< ^<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
$programmer, $description
~ ^<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
$description
~ ^<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
$description
~ ^<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
$description
~ ^<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
$description
~ ^<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<...
$description
.
It is possible to intermix print()s with write()s on the same
output channel, but you'll have to handle `$-'
(`$FORMAT_LINES_LEFT') yourself.
Format Variables
The current format name is stored in the variable `$~'
(`$FORMAT_NAME'), and the current top of form format name is in
`$^' (`$FORMAT_TOP_NAME'). The current output page number is
stored in `$%' (`$FORMAT_PAGE_NUMBER'), and the number of lines
on the page is in `$=' (`$FORMAT_LINES_PER_PAGE'). Whether to
autoflush output on this handle is stored in `$|'
(`$OUTPUT_AUTOFLUSH'). The string output before each top of page
(except the first) is stored in `$^L' (`$FORMAT_FORMFEED').
These variables are set on a per-filehandle basis, so you'll
need to select() into a different one to affect them:
select((select(OUTF),
$~ = "My_Other_Format",
$^ = "My_Top_Format"
)[0]);
Pretty ugly, eh? It's a common idiom though, so don't be too
surprised when you see it. You can at least use a temporary
variable to hold the previous filehandle: (this is a much better
approach in general, because not only does legibility improve,
you now have intermediary stage in the expression to single-step
the debugger through):
$ofh = select(OUTF);
$~ = "My_Other_Format";
$^ = "My_Top_Format";
select($ofh);
If you use the English module, you can even read the variable
names:
use English;
$ofh = select(OUTF);
$FORMAT_NAME = "My_Other_Format";
$FORMAT_TOP_NAME = "My_Top_Format";
select($ofh);
But you still have those funny select()s. So just use the
FileHandle module. Now, you can access these special variables
using lowercase method names instead:
use FileHandle;
format_name OUTF "My_Other_Format";
format_top_name OUTF "My_Top_Format";
Much better!
NOTES
Because the values line may contain arbitrary expressions (for
at fields, not caret fields), you can farm out more
sophisticated processing to other functions, like sprintf() or
one of your own. For example:
format Ident =
@<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
&commify($n)
.
To get a real at or caret into the field, do this:
format Ident =
I have an @ here.
"@"
.
To center a whole line of text, do something like this:
format Ident =
@|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
"Some text line"
.
There is no builtin way to say "float this to the right hand
side of the page, however wide it is." You have to specify where
it goes. The truly desperate can generate their own format on
the fly, based on the current number of columns, and then eval()
it:
$format = "format STDOUT = \n"
. '^' . '<' x $cols . "\n"
. '$entry' . "\n"
. "\t^" . "<" x ($cols-8) . "~~\n"
. '$entry' . "\n"
. ".\n";
print $format if $Debugging;
eval $format;
die $@ if $@;
Which would generate a format looking something like this:
format STDOUT =
^<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
$entry
^<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<~~
$entry
.
Here's a little program that's somewhat like fmt(1):
format =
^<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< ~~
$_
.
$/ = '';
while (<>) {
s/\s*\n\s*/ /g;
write;
}
Footers
While $FORMAT_TOP_NAME contains the name of the current header
format, there is no corresponding mechanism to automatically do
the same thing for a footer. Not knowing how big a format is
going to be until you evaluate it is one of the major problems.
It's on the TODO list.
Here's one strategy: If you have a fixed-size footer, you can
get footers by checking $FORMAT_LINES_LEFT before each write()
and print the footer yourself if necessary.
Here's another strategy: Open a pipe to yourself, using
`open(MYSELF, "|-")' (see the "open()" entry in the perlfunc
manpage) and always write() to MYSELF instead of STDOUT. Have
your child process massage its STDIN to rearrange headers and
footers however you like. Not very convenient, but doable.
Accessing Formatting Internals
For low-level access to the formatting mechanism. you may use
formline() and access `$^A' (the $ACCUMULATOR variable)
directly.
For example:
$str = formline <<'END', 1,2,3;
@<<< @||| @>>>
END
print "Wow, I just stored `$^A' in the accumulator!\n";
Or to make an swrite() subroutine, which is to write() what
sprintf() is to printf(), do this:
use Carp;
sub swrite {
croak "usage: swrite PICTURE ARGS" unless @_;
my $format = shift;
$^A = "";
formline($format,@_);
return $^A;
}
$string = swrite(<<'END', 1, 2, 3);
Check me out
@<<< @||| @>>>
END
print $string;
WARNINGS
The lone dot that ends a format can also prematurely end a mail
message passing through a misconfigured Internet mailer (and
based on experience, such misconfiguration is the rule, not the
exception). So when sending format code through mail, you should
indent it so that the format-ending dot is not on the left
margin; this will prevent SMTP cutoff.
Lexical variables (declared with "my") are not visible within a
format unless the format is declared within the scope of the
lexical variable. (They weren't visible at all before version
5.001.)
Formats are the only part of Perl that unconditionally use
information from a program's locale; if a program's environment
specifies an LC_NUMERIC locale, it is always used to specify the
decimal point character in formatted output. Perl ignores all
other aspects of locale handling unless the `use locale' pragma
is in effect. Formatted output cannot be controlled by `use
locale' because the pragma is tied to the block structure of the
program, and, for historical reasons, formats exist outside that
block structure. See the perllocale manpage for further
discussion of locale handling.
Inside of an expression, the whitespace characters \n, \t and \f
are considered to be equivalent to a single space. Thus, you
could think of this filter being applied to each value in the
format:
$value =~ tr/\n\t\f/ /;
The remaining whitespace character, \r, forces the printing of a
new line if allowed by the picture line.