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From: lwall@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV (Larry Wall)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
Subject: Re: top-of-form w/o formfeed
Message-ID: <10500@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV>
Date: 21 Nov 90 17:49:14 GMT
References: <1990Nov20.222930.1152@squirrel.mh.nl>
Reply-To: lwall@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV (Larry Wall)
Distribution: comp
Organization: Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA
Lines: 37

In article <1990Nov20.222930.1152@squirrel.mh.nl> Johan Vromans <jv@mh.nl> writes:
: Using write: how can I force the $^ format to be printed without a
: formfeed character being inserted?

Depends on what you mean.  If you mean that you want to write the top
of form format in the middle of a page, something like

	{
	    local($~) = $^;
	    write;
	}

should work.

If you mean you want to have $^ do top-of-page with line-feeds rather
than a form feed (ala nroff), there's no direct way to do that, other than
keeping track of the number of lines on the page yourself and printing
out a string of newlines at the right moment.  Either that, or running
it through some output filter:

	$pid = open(OUT, "|-");
	die "Can't fork: $!\n" unless defined $pid;
	unless ($pid) {			# we're the child process
	    $/ = "\f";
	    while (<>) {		# slurp each page
		chop;			# delete form feed
		$count = tr/\n/\n/;	# count newlines
		print $_, "\n" x (66 - $count);
	    }
	    exit;
	}
	...
	write OUT;			# or dup to STDOUT

This latter trick can also be used to massage headers into footers.

Larry