I posted an updated solution to this here Re: How to route a format into a variable.

The reason that ~~ doesn't really work with formline() is explained in perlfunc: 

   formline PICTURE,LIST
           ...

           Note that a format typically does one `formline' per
           line of form, but the `formline' function itself
           doesn't care how many newlines are embedded in the
           PICTURE.  This means that the `~' and `~~' tokens
           will treat the entire PICTURE as a single line.
           You may therefore need to use multiple formlines
           to implement a single record format, just like the
           format compiler.

           ...

[download]

--
John.

In reply to Re: Once more, question about Formats by jmcnamara
in thread Once more, question about Formats by ppm

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