Preserve trailing spaces with write format?

kurt_kober has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Howdy, I'm a newbie so apologies if this is a no-brainer.

I'm trying to use the write command to print a format to a file. Trouble is the trailing spaces are being truncated no matter what I do.

Example:

$test="Hi.";

$~="TEST";
write;

format TEST=
@<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
$test
.
[download]

The output would be simply "Hi." ending at the dot, but I need it to be padded out to the full twenty spaces. How do you do this?? I figured this would be easy, but I can't find the answer.

Any help would be amazingly appreciated.
Thanks!

Comment on Preserve trailing spaces with write format? Download Code

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Re: Preserve trailing spaces with write format? by tachyon (Chancellor) on Apr 17, 2002 at 18:40 UTC
`s/@<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<</@>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>/; # < left justify > :-)` [download] cheers tachyon s&&rsenoyhcatreve&&&s&n.+t&"$'$`$\"$\&"&ee&&y&srve&&d&&print	[reply] [d/l]
Re: Preserve trailing spaces with write format? by stephen (Priest) on Apr 17, 2002 at 18:42 UTC
Instead of using formats, it may be easier to use `sprintf`. `# Print "Hi." left-justified padded out to 20 spaces. print sprintf('%-20s', "Hi.");` [download] stephen	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: Re: Preserve trailing spaces with write format? by tachyon (Chancellor) on Apr 17, 2002 at 20:46 UTC
Or perhaps simply: `printf '%-20s', "Hi.";` [download] cheers tachyon s&&rsenoyhcatreve&&&s&n.+t&"$'$`$\"$\&"&ee&&y&srve&&d&&print	[reply] [d/l]
Re^3: Preserve trailing spaces with write format? by synistar (Pilgrim) on Oct 24, 2011 at 13:39 UTC
It looks like the write() function may be trimming the spaces. Look at the following node: write() removes trailing spaces	[reply]