Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!jpl-devvax!lwall
From: lwall@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV (Larry Wall)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
Subject: Re: format with tilde
Message-ID: <11526@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV>
Date: 21 Feb 91 01:52:04 GMT
References: <91049.163743FFAAC09@cc1.kuleuven.ac.be>
Reply-To: lwall@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV (Larry Wall)
Organization: Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA
Lines: 47

In article <91049.163743FFAAC09@cc1.kuleuven.ac.be> FFAAC09@cc1.kuleuven.ac.be (Paul Bijnens) writes:
: I have a problem using single and double tilde in formats.
: I have a file with each line consisting of 20 fields separated by
: a tab. Most of the fields are blank, some are short and the rest
: is very long (up to 1000 chars or more).
: For printing this out, I wanted to use perl (what other program
: does not choke on such long lines?).  A little skeleton of the
: program (which does also some other things) follows:
: 
: -*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-
: format =
: ^<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
:  $Xword
: ^<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<~
:  $Xvd
:     ^<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<~~
:      $Xvd
: ^<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<~
:  $Xhn
:     ^<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<~~
:      $Xhn
: ^<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<~
:  $Xdh
:     ^<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<~~
:      $Xdh
: ------------------------------------
: .
...
: Instead of just repeating the line with two tildes, it
: repeats the pair of lines.
: What do I do wrong?  Or isn't the format intended to be used
: for this purpose?

No, it should work, but it doesn't.  You're the first person who's ever
put a ~~ line directly after a ~ line, apparently.  Anyway, I found the
bug, so it'll be fixed in 4.0.
 
: Btw, in perl.4.0, beta release in lib/look.pl, we find:
:     ;#Usage: &look(*FILEHANDLE,$key,$dict,$fold)
: and a little bit further:
:     local(*FH,$key,$fold,$dict) = @_;
: ... If in doubt, look at the code...

But the code will change to match the documentation in this case, since
the book has it the other way around.

Larry