Text::Table does some of what you want I think.

Thanks a lot, that will do very nicely (i'm a little suprised I missed it).

#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;
use Text::Table;

print "==== Monks I think rock! ====\n\n";

my $tB = Text::Table->new(
    \'[ ',
    {
        title => 'Name',
        align => 'left',
    },
    \" | ", #separator
    {
        title => ' ',
        align => 'right',
    },
    \' ]',
);


$tB->load(
    [ steves => 'rocks plenty, found Text::Table'],
    [ 'Anno Siegel' => 'rocks plenty, after all he wrote Text::Table']
+,
);

print $tB->title();

print $tB->rule('#','#');
print $tB->body(0);
# bugger, a buG
# print $tB->title_rule('.');
print $tB->rule();
print $tB->body(1);
print $tB->body_rule('.');
print $tB->rule();
# this one ought to be called align
# and part of the package
print Text::Aligner::align(
    right =>
        ( ' ' x ( $tB->width() - length '... and many more ' ) )
        . '... and many more ' ),"\n";

__END__
==== Monks I think rock! ====

[ Name        |                                              ]
##############################################################
[ steves      |              rocks plenty, found Text::Table ]
[             |                                              ]
[ Anno Siegel | rocks plenty, after all he wrote Text::Table ]
[.............|..............................................]
[             |                                              ]
                                            ... and many more
[download]

update: I realized Anno is probably not a monk, oh well ;)

MJD says you can't just make shit up and expect the computer to know what you mean, retardo! ** The Third rule of perl club is a statement of fact: pod is sexy.

Would Data::Dumper be a step in the good direction? And perhaps capturing its output and slightly re-formatting it?

CountZero

"If you have four groups working on a compiler, you'll get a 4-pass compiler." - Conway's Law

How would that work? I'll stick with a variation on Re: Re: AoAoA to Text (or HTML table to text) thank you very much.

MJD says you can't just make shit up and expect the computer to know what you mean, retardo! ** The Third rule of perl club is a statement of fact: pod is sexy.

(I think it would really be useful to have a list of CPAN modules answering domain-specific questions like this one, with people's experiences with them. Or maybe people could take it upon themselves and get added to faq or somewhere?.. Questions. In other words, what is the best way to resolve the problem with many differently named modules, how to find the right one? Plus, how to leverage the jillions of man-hours that have already gone into solving these questions by someone somewhere in the Perl Community? Cpan directory is not up to date/no experience or conversation like Perlmonks has. Ideas welcome. )

Short answer - Text::Table, Text::FormatTable, Data::ShowTable.. then some other quick HTML ones in list below.

Long answer..

Text::Table I think I also remember.. see above. I wanted HTML so didn't follow it up.

Text::FormatTable - text tables

Data::ShowTable - lots of neat things to show tables from databases or subroutines. heavy,text or html

HTML::TableLayout - java-like oo table maker,widgets. old(1998) and docs sometimes wrong it admits, eek!

HTML::STable - simple table, actually really involved, inserting. Anyone with experience about using this module please post. also see: www.oocgi.com/doc_table.pl

HTML::HashTable - quickly print hash as a sorted html table, sounds neat.

HTML::Table - the standard, can do addrow addcol. I've used it in a HTML timesheet system for a 30 person company, about 10 cols by 50 rows and it was nice.

HTML::QuickTable - looks nice, has auto nonnulling, font face, width and other html things. sorts hash by key.
I'm probably going to use this for my current need which is to easily print things out for a management interface to a new search engine module I just made (Eye::Cats, not on CPAN, a directory match thingie much like Yahoo's). Short 'n sweet it says, about to try it today.

I like this idea. I think CPAN would be even better if modules had a FAQ-oriented cross-reference and some way for users to add reviews and usage comments.