Didn't merlyn write an article for TPJ discussing the use of formats to make data look the way you want it to look?

Look into formats. They may be old, but they are still handy.

Learning Perl has a good example of it:

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
while (my $filename = <*.secret>) {
     open(WORDSLIST, $filename);
     if (-M WORDSLIST < 7) {
          while (my $name = <WORDSLIST>) {
               chop($name);
               my $word = <WORDSLIST>;
               chop($word);
               write; # invoke format STDOUT to STDOUT
          }
     }
}

format STDOUT =
@<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< @<<<<<<<<<< @<<<<<<<<<<
$filename, $name, $word
.

format STDOUT_TOP =
Page @<<
$%

Filename         Name        Word
================ =========== ===========
.
[download]

I hope this helps.

J. J. Horner
Linux, Perl, Apache, Stronghold, Unix
jhorner@knoxlug.org http://www.knoxlug.org/