below is my code: 

#!/bin/perl
use v5.10;

  say "Please enter a few lines of text. Press crtl-D when finished";
  @text_lines = <STDIN>;
  chomp($text_lines);
  say "Please enter the width of the column: ";
  $column = <STDIN>;
  $ruler = "1234567890";
  say "$ruler" x $column;

  foreach (@text_lines) {
    #printf "%${column}s\n", $_;
    printf  "%${column}s\n", $_;      
  }

[download]

Here is my output:

Please enter a few lines of text. Press crtl-D when finished

rrrrr eeeeee tyyyyy

Please enter the width of the column: 10 1234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890

%10

s

%10

s

%10

s

I copied the code straight out of Learning Perl (7th edition). I typed in 3 lines of text as well as the width I wanted. The output should have been the repeating numbers, (1-0), and then below the text lines with aligned columns, (width called in by <STDIN>. I guess it worked ok for the authors ... not so much for me though .... Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks, Catfish

In reply to Print format not working by catfish1116

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.