Just to remind myself: The backslash in open($fh, '>', \$variable) allows the filehandle to be opened to an "in memory" file held in a scalar. See open.

Update:

Here is my working example:

#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;
use warnings;
use English qw( -no_match_vars );
use Getopt::Long;

my $in_memory;
GetOptions('in_memory|i' => \$in_memory,
          );

my $greeting = "Hello World!";

format BLAH =
Greeting: @<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
$greeting
.

my $fh;
my $message;

if (defined($in_memory)) {
    open $fh, '>', \$message or die "Couldn't open for writing: $!";
} else {
    $fh = *STDOUT;
}

select($fh);
$FORMAT_NAME = 'BLAH';
write();
select(STDOUT);

if (defined($in_memory)) {
    print "Message written to in memory variable:\n";
    print "$message";
    close($fh);
}

[download]

loris

In reply to Re^2: Writing formatted text to a string? by loris
in thread Writing formatted text to a string? by loris

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