Hello grasshopper!!!,

Anonymous Monk may well be right to recommend that you change to Perl6::Form, but in the meantime what you are trying to do is quite possible with format:

#! perl
use strict;
use warnings;
use LWP::Simple;

my @data;

format NASDAQ_HEADER =
SYMBOL         Name                   High                 Low        
+     Close           Volume            Change       +/-
----------------------------------------------------------------------
+---------------------------------------------------
.

format NASDAQ_FORMAT =
@<<<<<        @<<<<<<<         @###.#####         @###.####       @###
+.####      @|||||||||||      @###.###    @##.##
@data
.

for my $i ('O' .. 'Q')
{
    # Retrieve data from URL
    my $url   = 'http://eoddata.com/stocklist/NASDAQ/' . $i . '.htm';
    my $str   =  get($url) or die "Cannot get URL '$url': $!";
    print "Retrieved URL: $url\n";
    my @array = ($str =~ m/.+?Chart for NASDAQ,\w+?">(.+?)<\/A><\/td><
+td>(.+?)<\/td><td align=right>(\d+?\.\d+?)<\/td><td align=right>(\d+?
+\.\d+?)<\/td><td align=right>(\d+?\.\d+?)<\/td><td align=right>(\d+?,
+?\d+?,?\d+?)<\/td><td align="right">(-?\d+?\.\d+?)<\/td><td align="ce
+nter"><IMG.+?><\/td><td align="left">(-?\d+?\.\d+?)<\/td>.+?/gi);

    # Prepare output file and format
    my      $out = 'nasdaq_list_format' . $i . '.txt';
    open(my $fh, '>', $out) or die "Cannot open file '$out' for writin
+g: $!";
    my      $ofh = select $fh;          # Select filehandle for write(
+)
    local   $^L  = '';                  # Suppress form feed
    local   $%   = 1;                   # Set current page number
    local   $^   = 'NASDAQ_HEADER';     # Set format header
    local   $~   = 'NASDAQ_FORMAT';     # Set format
    local   $=   = @array / 8 + 5;      # Set lines per page

    # Write formatted output to file
    write $fh while @data = splice @array, 0, 8;

    # Tidy up
    close  $fh or die "Cannot close file '$out': $!";
    select $ofh;                        # Restore old filehandle (STDI
+N)
}
[download]

Some notes:

• The key change is to select the filehandle for the subsequent write statement, and to set $^, $~, etc., to their appropriate values. Note that when $^ and $~ are set explicitly, the format names don’t need to match the filehandle name.

• Using format is no excuse not to use strict and lexical variables (including a lexical filehandle)!

• Whenever you see something like ($m,$n,$o,$p,$q,$r,$s,$t) =, think: “That should be an array.”

• The line:

  my $str = get($url) or die "Couldn't get it!" unless defined $str;
  [download]

  generates a warning, because $str is evaluated in the unless condition before it’s declared. It’s probably just a typo; but, for the record, the unless clause is redundant here.

Hope that helps,

---

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