Hi All, trying to teach myself perl and am running into some frustration using write. I've written a simple script to count the occurences of digits in numbers and compare them to the "expected" frequency (Benford's Law), but when I go to print it I can't seem to get the format right, I get "runaway format" if I try to do it per the documentation I have. Here's the exisitng write section:

<snip a bunch of stupid newbie code> 

write;

format FtDreport=
*****************Digits 1 - 99 ************************************
NUMBER**OCCURENCES***EXPECTED *****ACTUAL**************************
*******************************************************************
~~ ^<       ^>>>>>  ^>>>>>>>>   ^>>>>>>>>
$digits, $ftdocc, $ftdexp, $ftdact

*******************************************************************   
+ 
.

[download]
This works great if the file I'm reading has enough numbers (say 100K) but not if I run through 100 or so. The problem is with the "^" which I know means wrap this line, but if I try the following using @>> or even @# I get the runaway format. I can post the rest of the script if it would help . I'm using active state perl 5.83 on win32....Can anyone point me to a good resource for "write" or clue me in if I'm making some stupid mistake?

TIA-
Jeff

In reply to Making sense of "write"?? by jeff316

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