Hello Monks,
I don't exactly understand the '\r' character and how to make it work for me. I have some rather long strings that I output with the help of (good old) format. My strings have '\n' characters within them that I'd like to preserve while I output the entire string via the '~~ $var' convention of format.

The camel book says I'm effectively experiencing
$value =~ tr/\n\t\f/ /;
continuing with: The remaining whitespace character, \r, forces the printing of a new line if the picture line allows it.

Fine, how do I put this to work?

In the following (working) example, doing nothing (Version A) indeed simply replaces \n with a space character. (See output under __DATA__.) Version B might be tolerable, Version C is my feeble attempt at using the advice above. But what is the mystery method that will produce Version D (in which I can even tolerate the indented info)????


my $last_line_label = 'IMPRESSION/PLAN: ';

my $line =  'I discussed otitis media with her but since her ears are 
+normal today, we do not need to do anything with them. 


_____________________________
Marcus Welby, M.D.

MW/bnj';

format FLDFMT = 

@<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<^<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
$last_line_label, $line
~~     ^<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
$line
.

$~ = 'FLDFMT';

#                                # Version A
$line =~ s/\n/' ' x 50/ge;        # Version B
#$line =~ tr/\n/\r/;            # Version C
#mystery_command;                # Version D

write;

__DATA__

Version A:
IMPRESSION/PLAN: I discussed otitis media with her but since
       her ears are normal today, we do not need to do
       anything with them.    _____________________________
       Marcus Welby, M.D.  MW/bnj



Version B:
IMPRESSION/PLAN: I discussed otitis media with her but since
       her ears are normal today, we do not need to do
       anything with them.
       _____________________________
       Marcus Welby, M.D.
       MW/bnj



Version C:
IMPRESSION/PLAN: I discussed otitis media with her but since
       her ears are normal today, we do not need to do
       anything with them.
       _____________________________
       Marcus Welby, M.D.



Version D:
IMPRESSION/PLAN: I discussed otitis media with her but since
       her ears are normal today, we do not need to do
       anything with them.


       _____________________________
       Marcus Welby, M.D.

       MW/bnj

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In reply to Using '/r' with '~~ $var' in format by ff

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