in reply to Heredoc in one-liner?

G'day loris,

The reason you're getting that error is because the heredoc (in your module) is being interpolated.

In your module, you've probably either coded <<"PROLOG" or <<PROLOG.

See perlop: Quote-Like Operators for an explanation of how explicit single- and double-quoted terminating strings (i.e. PROLOG in your example) are interpolated; also note that the absence of explicit quotes assumes double-quotes.

There are a variety of hoops you have to jump through to get similar code working in a one-liner. These have mostly been pointed out in various replies. You could embed newlines in your one-liner and do something like this:

$ perl -Mstrict -Mwarnings -e 'package test; my $text = <<\TEST; test@heredoc TEST print $text' test@heredoc

That's not using the module as such; just running the code in a package other than main. You're also using a different (albeit equivalent) method of quoting the terminator (i.e. <<\TEST). What you'd really want is something closer to this:

$ perl -Mstrict -Mwarnings -e 'package test; my $text = <<\TEST; test@heredoc TEST sub test_print { print $text } package main; use parent -norequire => "test"; test::test_print()' test@heredoc

That's a lot of effort; it's not really comparing apples with apples; and, given you could have copied most of the code you already had, probably takes a similar amount of time as coding this test script:

#!/usr/bin/env perl use strict; use warnings; use pm_example_module; pm_example_module::test_print();

and this test module:

package pm_example_module; use strict; use warnings; my %text_blocks; $text_blocks{en}{prolog} =<<'PROLOG'; You have received this email because something happened. Please send feedback and suggestions to tldr@nohelp.org. PROLOG sub test_print { print $text_blocks{en}{prolog}; } 1;

Running that script produces:

You have received this email because something happened. Please send feedback and suggestions to tldr@nohelp.org.

Changing <<'PROLOG' to either <<"PROLOG" or <<PROLOG, produces (in both cases):

Possible unintended interpolation of @nohelp in string at pm_example_m +odule.pm line 8. Global symbol "@nohelp" requires explicit package name at pm_example_m +odule.pm line 8. Compilation failed in require at ./pm_example.pl line 6. BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at ./pm_example.pl line 6.

You now have a valid test which reproduces what you were attempting to test and, I suspect, would have taken less time than writing and posting your OP.

-- Ken

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Re^2: Heredoc in one-liner?
by loris (Hermit) on Nov 28, 2013 at 08:16 UTC

    Hi,

    Thanks to everyone for all the help. The problem was that I had

    $text_blocks{en}{prolog} <<'PROLOG';

    instead of

    $text_blocks{en}{prolog} = <<'PROLOG';

    in my first heredoc. Subsequent heredocs were OK, so I somehow missed it. D'oh!

    Of course the point about the time spent writing and posting is correct. However, thanks to the your answer I now realise that I didn't need a one-liner to actually be on one line, but could simply embed the newlines.

    Cheers,

    loris