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From: jgreely@giza.cis.ohio-state.edu (J Greely)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
Subject: Re: dynamic formats
Message-ID: <JGREELY.90Jan15153029@giza.cis.ohio-state.edu>
Date: 15 Jan 90 20:30:29 GMT
References: <JV.90Jan15163050@mhres.mh.nl>
Sender: news@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu
Reply-To: J Greely <jgreely@cis.ohio-state.edu>
Organization: Ohio State University Computer and Information Science
Lines: 38
In-reply-to: jv@mh.nl's message of 15 Jan 90 23:30:50 GMT

In article <JV.90Jan15163050@mhres.mh.nl> jv@mh.nl (Johan Vromans) writes:
>A format specification is apparently of a static nature. Is it
>possible to dynamically create formats,

Yes, but only the clumsy way.

>Currently the only way I can think of, is creating a temporary file
>with the format spec in it, and 'do'ing it.

That's what I use.  I have a subroutine 'feval' that I keep handy in a
library.

	sub feval {
		local($form,$file) = @_;
		$file = "/tmp/feval.$$.pl";
		open(file,">$file") || die "$file: $!\n";
		print file $form;
		close(file);
		do $file;
		unlink $file;
	}

It's a quick and dirty workaround, and I brought the problem to
Larry's attention a while back.  I'm sure he'll respond with the
current status.

  Easy to use, though:

	$field = "foo";
	&feval(<<'EOF');
	format STDOUT =
	@<<<<<
	$field
	.
	EOF
	write;
--
J Greely (jgreely@cis.ohio-state.edu; osu-cis!jgreely)