formline - internal function used for formats

- NAME
- SYNOPSIS
- DESCRIPTION

# NAME

formline - internal function used for formats

# SYNOPSIS

formline PICTURE,LIST

# DESCRIPTION

This is an internal function used by `format`s, though you may call it, too. It formats (see the perlform manpage) a list of values according to the contents of PICTURE, placing the output into the format output accumulator, `$^A` (or `$ACCUMULATOR` in English). Eventually, when a `write` is done, the contents of `$^A` are written to some filehandle. You could also read `$^A` and then set `$^A` back to `""`. Note that a format typically does one `formline` per line of form, but the `formline` function itself doesn't care how many newlines are embedded in the PICTURE. This means that the `~` and `~~` tokens will treat the entire PICTURE as a single line. You may therefore need to use multiple formlines to implement a single record format, just like the format compiler.

Be careful if you put double quotes around the picture, because an `@` character may be taken to mean the beginning of an array name. `formline` always returns true. See the perlform manpage for other examples.

formline - internal function used for formats