Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!samsung!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!sol.ctr.columbia.edu!emory!emcard!wa4mei!rsiatl!pda
From: pda@rsiatl.UUCP (Paul D. Anderson)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
Subject: Problems with format...
Message-ID: <1649@rsiatl.UUCP>
Date: 6 Apr 90 16:06:33 GMT
Reply-To: pda@rsiatl.UUCP (Paul D. Anderson)
Organization: Crossroads Computing, Inc
Lines: 41

I have been working with Perl's format statement and have been experiencing
a bit of trouble with interleaving of IO.  It appears that some data in 
the body of the output is put in a magical buffer that doesn't get flushed
until the output is closed.  The only thing that I am doing that is a bit
unusual is embedding escape sequences in the format strings to cause a 
laser printer to change fonts...  The end effect is that about the first 
1 to 5 lines of text output by 'format OUT =' setup endup in the output file
after all other text has been sent.

Can anyone see anything that might cause such a problem?  'tabexp' is a 
tab expansion program.  All program output is directed to a file or the
laser printer under normal operation.  The 'x.' in the format statements is
really just a '.' in normal operations.

The following is essentially the structure of the program:

$COMPRESS="^[abcdefghijkl";
$RESET="^[E";

format top =
@<
$RESET
	Some text to be presented
@<<<<<<<<<<<<
$COMPRESS
x.

format OUT =
@<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
$data
x.

foreach $a (<*>) {
	open(IN,$a);
	open(OUT,'|tabexp');
	while (<IN>) {
		$data = $_;
		write(OUT);
	};
	close(IN); close (OUT);
};