I have a program which returns data formatted according to a format string that will be entered by the user. Lets say the string looks like this:

%a-%b-%c: %x.%y.%z

What I want is simply to have the letters replaced with local (my()-declared vars in a sub) varibles and then simply output. This is what I was using, but returns oddly-formatted string: 
sub foo {
   my $format_string = shift;
   my $a = ...;
   my $b = ...;
   ...
   my $z = ...;

   $format_string =~ s/(%(\w))/eval "$$2"/e;
   return $format_string;
}

[download]
but that never works...it returns different things at different times, but it never replaces all the varibles across the string. What am I doing wrong?

Thanks to all and happy 19001!!

R.Joseph

In reply to Format string and regex question by r.joseph

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