It has come to our attention that you are delinquent in your
        {$monthname[$last_paid_month]} payment.  Please remit
        ${sprintf("%.2f", $amount)} immediately, or your patellae may 
        be needlessly endangered. 
                       Love,
                       Mark "Vizopteryx" Dominus
[download]

#!/usr/bin/perl5.6

use Text::Template;
my $template = Text::Template->new(SOURCE => 'formletter.tmpl')
          or die "Couldn't construct template: $Text::Template::ERROR"
+; 
my @monthname = qw(January February March April May June
                           July August September October November Dece
+mber);
my %vars1 = (title => 'Mr.',
                    last_paid_month => 1,   # February
                    amount => 392.12,
                    monthname => \@monthname,
                   );

my $result = $template->fill_in(HASH => \%vars1);

if (defined $result) { print $result }
else { die "Couldn't fill in template: $Text::Template::ERROR" }

my %vars2 = (title => 'Mr.',
                    firstname => 'Bill',
                    lastname => 'Gates',
                   );

$result = $template->fill_in(HASH => \%vars2);
if (defined $result) { print $result }
else { die "Couldn't fill in template: $Text::Template::ERROR" }
[download]

Argh!
I played around with this for a while before I realised the mistake.. Your set of values for the second template contains neither 'last_paid_month', nor 'amount', the other values aren't even being used.. It's no wonder theres no month or value in the second output..

C.

(Well that was a good waste of 20 minutes.. Do I feel stupid..)

Use another hash to hold the variables and just keep adding your new hash to it. Anything you change will override the previous values, anything you don't will just stay there.

#!/usr/bin/perl5.6
use Text::Template;
my $template = Text::Template->new(SOURCE => 'formletter.tmpl')
          or die "Couldn't construct template: $Text::Template::ERROR"
+;
my @monthname = qw(January February March April May June
                           July August September October November Dece
+mber);
my %vars1 = (title => 'Mr.',
                    last_paid_month => 1,   # February
                    amount => 392.12,
                    monthname => \@monthname,
                   );

my %keepvars = %vars1;

my $result = $template->fill_in(HASH => \%keepvars);
if (defined $result) { print $result }
else { die "Couldn't fill in template: $Text::Template::ERROR" }
my %vars2 = (title => 'Mr.',
                    firstname => 'Bill',
                    lastname => 'Gates',
                   );

%keepvars = (%keepvars, %vars2);

$result = $template->fill_in(HASH => \%keepvars);
if (defined $result) { print $result }
else { die "Couldn't fill in template: $Text::Template::ERROR" }
[download]

Thanks to all for your very helpful responses.

My intention was to fill in a template by diiferent hash tables since my template will be big with a lot of variables to be defined. It looks like that I have no choice but just fill-in the template after collected all the varaibles in one shoot.

I really hope that the Text::Template could allow people to save previous filled-in data, i.e. do accumulation and also allow people to "refresh" if needed. This may not make sense?

Regards
Taizi

Instead of:

%keepvars = (%keepvars, %vars2);
[download]

You could also do this:

@keepvars{keys %vars2} = values %vars2;
[download]

Oh, now I understand: you want to call it more than once but have the variables from the first call still be there, right? I thought you just wanted to produce multiple different results without loading the template again.

I don't understand why you would want to do that, but the answer is no, you can't. Instead, you should collect all the values for a single run of the template before you call fill_in. Is there a reason you are avoiding that?