Have you considered using Perl's builtin formatting mechanisms? perlform. That seems to me that that's what your goal is.

Potentially something like this would work for you:

format STDOUT_TOP =
@<<<<<<<<< @<<<<<<<<< @<<<<<<<<< @<<<<<<<<<
$time[0],  $time[1],  $time[2],  $time[3],
.
format STDOUT =
@<<<<<<<<< @###   @###   @###   @###
$type,     $val1, $val2, $val3, $val4
.
$~ = "STDOUT_TOP";
write;
[download]

Eric