How can I use Unicode characters when I write to Perl's format?

email, format, perl, unicode

Solution

I have never had the desire to learn about formats. This is a bad answer because I am unable to offer any insight into your problem and/or potential solutions, but others have already done that. I am going to offer two suggestions for replacements.

The first one, `Perl6::Form` ought to be useful as a better `format` although I had never used it until I put together this example today. On the other hand, I have used `Text::Table` and it is very useful for creating tables in plain text (most of the time, I just generate HTML, but email is still one of those places where plain text is plainly better).

`Perl6::Form` example:

#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;
use warnings;

use Perl6::Form;

my @data = (
    ['127.0.0.1', 'Johnny Smithey', 'JLNSJIV', 14, 5],
    ['127.0.0.2', 'Ömer Seyfettin Şınas', 'OSS3', 25, 5],
);

for my $data_ref ( @data ) {
    print format_data($data_ref);
}

sub format_data {
    my ($data) = @_;
    return form
        '{<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<} {<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<} ' .
        '{<<<<<<<<<<} {<<<<<<<<<<<<<<} {>>}',
        @$data;
}

`Text::Table` example:

#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;
use warnings;

use Text::Table;

my %common_options = (
    align => 'left',
    title_align => 'center',
);

my $sep = \' ';

my $table = Text::Table->new(
    {
        title  => 'IP Address',
        sample => '<' x 15,
        %common_options,
    },
    $sep,
    {
        title => 'Full Name',
        sample => '<' x 34,
        %common_options,
    },
    $sep,
    {
        title => 'RID',
        sample => '<' x 10,
        %common_options,
    },
    $sep,
    {
        title => 'Since',
        sample => '<' x 14,
        %common_options,
    },
    $sep,
    {
        title => 'Times',
        sample => '>' x 2,
        align => 'right',
        title_align => 'center'
    },
);

$table->rule('');

$table->load(
['127.0.0.1', 'Johnny Smith-Jones', 'JLNSJIV', '20090814010203', 5],
['127.0.0.2', 'Ömer Seyfettin Şınas', 'OSS3', '20071211101112', 3],
['192.168.172.144', 'Jane Doe', 'JD156', '20080101010101', 1],
);

print $table->table;

Problem

Original source

Related problems

• What other languages have features and/or libraries similar to Perl's format?