I tried what you wrote, just for grins. I had to change the get_key() routine slightly to make it pass 'use strict' and -w. I get a whole bunch of errors of 'Argument "" isn't numeric in formline at t.pl line 42'.

Update #1: I, too, have modified this code to reflect merlyn's change. However, I still get the same error message...

Update #2: It was determined that using the original format code wasn't working because the @### doesn't work with ~~, since you can't get an empty string. Changing these to <'s fixed it.

But, I don't know jack about formats, so I can't fix it. Any thoughts? And what version of Perl are you running in your head? 5.005_03, or 5.6? <G>

#!/usr/local/bin/perl -w

use strict;

my %hash_you_want_to_scan = ('kudra'      => 1, 
                             'neshura'    => 2, 
                             'Ozymandias' => 3,
                             'merlyn'     => 4,
                            );
                            
{
  my $value;
  my $hash_ref;
  my $done;
  
  sub get_key {
    my $key;

    unless ($done) {
      ($key, $value) = each %$hash_ref or # yes, $value is out of scop
+e
        $done = 1;
    }
    defined $key ? $key : "";
  }
  
  sub get_value {
    defined $value ? $value : "";
  }
  
  sub set_hash {
    $hash_ref = shift;
    keys %$hash_ref; # reset each()
    $done = 0;
  }
}

set_hash(\%hash_you_want_to_scan);
write STDOUT;

format STDOUT =
@<<<<< @<<<     @<<<<< @<<< ~~
get_key(), get_value(), get_key(), get_value()
.
[download]

---

Original code that merlyn identified as broke was:

  sub get_key {
    my $key;
    unless ($done) {
      ($key, my $value) = each %$hash_ref or # yes, $value is out of s
+cope
        $done = 1;
    }
    defined $key ? $key : "";
  }
[download]

(It's the extra 'my' in front of the $value, which was wrecking the scope).

---

Original format that caused the runaway format error:

format STDOUT =
@>>>>> @###     @>>>>> @### ~~
get_key(), get_value(), get_key(), get_value()
.
[download]

--Chris

e-mail jcwren