Since Perl 5.8.0 you can open a filehandle for writing to a scalar. Then, if you make that filehandle the default, writes will go there. 

my %hash = (one => 1, two => 2, three => 3);

my $output;
open FH, '>', \$output;
my $old_fh = select(FH);

my $key;
foreach $key (keys %hash) { 
    write;
}   

select ($old_fh);

print $output;

format FH =
@<<<<<<<<< @##
$key, $hash{$key}
.

[download]
Content of $output: 
three        3
one          1
two          2

[download]

Unfortunately, this doesn't seem to work with localized filehandles.

In reply to Re: How do I print formatted text to a scalar instead of a filehandle? by shmem
in thread How do I print formatted text to a scalar instead of a filehandle? by kwaping

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