Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!pacific.mps.ohio-state.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!samsung!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!mcsun!hp4nl!star.cs.vu.nl!maart
From: maart@cs.vu.nl (Maarten Litmaath)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
Subject: here documents
Message-ID: <7192@star.cs.vu.nl>
Date: 30 Jul 90 22:01:43 GMT
Sender: news@cs.vu.nl
Reply-To: maart@cs.vu.nl (Maarten Litmaath)
Organization: VU Dept. of Computer Science, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Lines: 50

How about adding a `<<-' here document operator, which strips leading
tabs and spaces off the lines forming the document?  (And the line
trailing the document.)  Current practice in sh.  Preserves indentation
in the script.  Currently the only workarounds I can think of are:

1)
	print 	"Newsgroups: $Newsgroups\n"
	.	"Subject: $Subject\n"
	.	"Summary: \n"
	.	"Expires: \n"
	.	"References:$References\n"
	.	"Reply-To: $Name\@$Domainname ($Fullname)\n"
	.	"Followup-To: \n"
	.	"Distribution: $Distribution\n"
	.	"Organization: $Organization\n"
	.	"Keywords: \n"
	.	"\n"
	.	"In article $Message_ID,\n"
	.	"\t$Orig_From writes:\n";

[Sic!]

2)
	sub here {
		$_[0] =~ s/((^|\n))[ \t]+/$1/g;
		$_[0] =~ s/((^|\n))\\/$1/g;
		$_[0];
	}
	print &here(<<"	EOF");
		Newsgroups: $Newsgroups
		Subject: $Subject
		Summary: 
		Expires: 
		References:$References
		Reply-To: $Name\@$Domainname ($Fullname)
		Followup-To: 
		Distribution: $Distribution
		Organization: $Organization
		Keywords: 

		In article $Message_ID,
		\\\t$Orig_From writes:
	EOF

BTW, I'd like `<<"\tEOF"' to work as well...

[Remember, we're talking about _readability_ here, Randal!  :-)  ]
--
 "and with a sudden plop it lands on usenet.  what is it? omigosh, it must[...]
   be a new user! quick kill it before it multiplies!"      (Loren J. Miller)