I've actually used Perl5's formats qute a lot (probably because I used Perl4's formats quite a lot...) but I'm generally ambivalent about whether they are implemented as a module or not. All the new features and capabilities are very pleasing, but I was begining to wonder if they were getting out of control since the output is still plain text which has frankly limited audience these days. However I am very pleased by the
which mention alternate output for formats. Now I don't think
, but this could certainly give new life to a lot of old code that I still use.