Can someone please provide me with a (working) example of how to set and use multiple formats when writing to a file? I managed to get it to work writing to STDOUT (how, I don't know), but not when I've opened a new file for output.

Here's the bare-bones outline of what I'm attempting.

open (REPORT,">$filename") || die "error";
...
$^ = "NEWPAGE";
...
foreach [outer loop]
   $~ = "FIRST_FORMAT";
   write (REPORT);

   foreach [inner loop]
      $~ = "SECOND_FORMAT";
      write (REPORT);

   [end inner loop]

[end outer loop]

close (REPORT) || die ...

[download]

I have tried various forms and combinations of select, including

$oldHandle = select (REPORT);
$~ = [format reference]
select $oldHandle;

[download]

and nothing seems to work. The best I can do appears to be one pass through each loop, with the following error messages:

write() on closed filehandle REPORT at script line xxx
[repeated several times]
Cannot close <filename> (Bad file descriptor)

[download]

Please note in your answers I'm not a programmer - I'm an engineer who simply uses perl to make my life easier.

In reply to Using multliple formats when writing to a file by rlemert

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