Top of format won't print

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

I have a Perl format that doesn't want to print the top of the report.

open EOS_REPORT, "| lp -d lex_text" or die "Cannot open EOS report for
+ printing: $!";

# lots of code to assemble data

write EOS_REPORT;
close EOS_REPORT;

format EOS_REPORT_TOP =
                                           @>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
                                           'Page: ' . $%
@||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
"End of day register report"
@||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
$today

Run by:  @<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<    @>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
         $name,                          "Terminal: ".$hostname

.

format EOS_REPORT =

    Total Sales
---------------
@>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
$total

     Total Cash     Total Account       Total Check
---------------   ---------------   ---------------
@>>>>>>>>>>>>>>   @>>>>>>>>>>>>>>   @>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
$tcash,           $taccount,        $tcheck

 CC Manual Auth      Total Credit
---------------   ---------------
@>>>>>>>>>>>>>>   @>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
$tcc_man_auth,           $tcredit



@||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
"Price Overrides"
@||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
"(Negative quantities are overrides on refunds)"

Clerk                SKU                   Old price  New price
-------------------  -------------------- ---------- ----------
^<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< ~~
$override_report
.
[download]

I can't find anything that I've changed, but the top of the report used to print and now it doesn't. I don't know formats terribly well, so I don't know what to look for. I haven't found any references anywhere which indicate what the problem might be.

Cheers,
Ovid

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Comment on Top of format won't print Download Code

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
•Re: Top of format won't print by merlyn (Sage) on Jul 09, 2002 at 18:31 UTC
The top of format prints only on second and subsequent pages. Could that be the problem? -- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker	[reply]
Re: •Re: Top of format won't print by Ovid (Cardinal) on Jul 09, 2002 at 18:40 UTC
I didn't know that, but I'm skeptical -- which confuses me, considering the source. The actual "top of report" from yesterday (formatted to fit the text window - along with the beginning of the main body of the report): `Page: 1 End of day register report Mon Jul 8 18:10:38 2002 Run by: Ovid Terminal: some.terminal Total Sales --------------- 12.34` [download] I just typed that in directly from a test report sitting by my right hand. From `perldoc -f write` (emphasis mine): Top of form processing is handled automatically: if there is insufficient room on the current page for the formatted record, the page is advanced by writing a form feed, a special top-of-page format is used to format the new page header, and then the record is written. By default the top-of-page format is the name of the filehandle with "_TOP" appended, but it may be dynamically set to the format of your choice by assigning the name to the "$^" variable while the filehandle is selected. The number of lines remaining on the current page is in variable "$-", which can be set to "0" to force a new page. And from page 123 of the 2nd Camel (emphasis mine): Top-of-form processing is by default handled by a format with the same name as the current filehandle with "_TOP" concatenated to it. It's triggered at the to of each page. So, `perldoc` mentions something about a "special top-of-page format" used to format new page headers, but this seems very unclear. What "special" format. How does this differ from the current "top-of-page" format? This program used to do what I want and now it doesn't. I've also heard that our client has had intermittant problems with this. Seems like a bug, but whether it's in my code or Perl, I don't know. I suspect a bug in the documentation, actually :) I'd be happy to submit a doc patch to P5P, if I knew what I was patching (if, in fact, unclear docs are the problem). Cheers, Ovid Join the Perlmonks Setiathome Group or just click on the the link and check out our stats.	[reply] [d/l]
Re: Top of format won't print by RMGir (Prior) on Jul 09, 2002 at 20:54 UTC
For what little it's worth, this code prints the _TOP format on every page (including the first), with 3 different perls. perl 5.6.1 for cygwin, ActivePerl 633 (also a 5.6.1), and perl 5.6.0 on Linux. I don't have a 5.8.0 RC installed, though; maybe that's the problem? Here's the code: `#!/usr/bin/perl -w use strict; my $total; format STDOUT_TOP = @>>>>>>>>>>>>>> 'Page: ' . $% Numbers --------------- . format STDOUT = @>>>>>>>>>>>>>> $total . for $total(1..200) { write STDOUT; }` [download] (Edit: Just ran a grepmail on my copy of the p5p archives, and the only thing even remotely related to this appears to be bug 20020227.005, and that's a problem with empty _TOP sections... I don't see any sign that this behaviour changed from 5.6.1 to 5.8.0) -- Mike	[reply] [d/l]