CODEWITHSUNDEEP
perlformattingoutput
yanbin
yanbin

Reputation: 1

How to use the Perl format function to print multiple columns

I have a Perl hash like %word. The key is the word and the value is its count. Now I want to display %word like:

the  20       array  10       print     2
a    18       perl    8       function  1
of   12       code    5

I search and Perl format can solve this, and I learn this page perlform, but I still don't how to do it.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 352

Answers (1)

vanHoesel
vanHoesel

Reputation: 954

I knew about format and that it could be vary handy to generate nice forms... at the time we still had a world where all was monospaced...

So, I researched it a bit and found the following solution:

use strict;
use warnings;

my %word = (
     the      => 20,
     array    => 10,
     print    =>  2,
     a        => 18,
     perl     =>  8,
     function =>  1,
     of       => 12,
     code     =>  5,
);

my @word = %word; # turn the hash into a list

format =
@<<<<<<<<<<< @>>>>        @<<<<<<<<<<< @>>>>        @<<<<<<<<<<< @>>>>~~
shift @word, shift @word, shift @word, shift @word, shift @word, shift @word
.

write;

The nasty problem sits in the ~~ which makes the line repeating and that for each field in the format line you do need a corresponding scalar value... In order to get those scalar values, I shifted them off from the @word array.

There is a lot more to know about format and write.

Have fun!

Upvotes: 0

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