<<EOF syntax for reading into string

hasenbraten has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Hi Lads,
I am simply trying to get a longer unquoted string into a variable. S.th. like this which doesn't work (I tried to force the idea from: print <<"EOF"< which doesnt quite do what I want).

$x=readstring();

sub readstring
{
$x <<"EOF";

here is my unquoted 
multiline string

EOF
return $x;
}
[download]

Thanks a lot hasenbraten

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Re: <<EOF syntax for reading into string by eserte (Deacon) on Apr 19, 2004 at 17:28 UTC
You missed a "=". Try `$x = <<"EOF";`	[reply] [d/l]
Re: <<EOF syntax for reading into string by Zaxo (Archbishop) on Apr 19, 2004 at 17:59 UTC
I notice that you have global $x appearing again in the code of readstring(). That will replace $x whenever readstring is called, whether or not you assign to it. Declaring the lexical `my $x = <<EOF;` in the first line of the sub will fix that. You can do without temporary variables entirely with the following oddity, `sub readstring () { <<'EOF'; here is my unquoted multiline string EOF }` [download] The empty prototype is a hint to the compiler that readstring returns a constant value and can be evaluated during compilation. I single-quoted the heredoc end tag to emphasize that there is no variable interpolation to happen. ("unquoted" is only true in a typographic sense - heredocs can employ any of perl's flavors of quoting) After Compline, Zaxo	[reply] [d/l]
Re: <<EOF syntax for reading into string by pbeckingham (Parson) on Apr 19, 2004 at 17:38 UTC
That's called a "here document". Please note that you have other options for unquoted, multiline strings, namely the uninterpolated `q` and the interpolated `qq`. `sub readstring { qq{ here is my unquoted multiline string }; }` [download]	[reply] [d/l] [select]