While the comments here are great, I've personally found using the Perl6::Form module to be easier to use, less finicky, and has made my code more readable and maintainable. It's written by Damian Conway; he recommends it in his book _Perl Best Practices_.

An example from the CPAN page:

   use Perl6::Form;

    $text = form " =================================== ",
                 "| NAME     |    AGE     | ID NUMBER |",
                 "|----------+------------+-----------|",
                 "| {<<<<<<} | {||||||||} | {>>>>>>>} |",
                    $name,     $age,        $ID,
                 "|===================================|",
                 "| COMMENTS                          |",
                 "|-----------------------------------|",
                 "| {[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[} |",
                    $comments,
                 " =================================== ";
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