On Mon, 15 Oct 2001 20:53:24 -0400, Michael G Schwern wrote:
>Not only is it a bit faster than the s/^\s+//gm regex, but it is also
>more flexible.
>
> if( $self->feeling_snooty ) {
> print <<'POEM';
> Sometimes
> form has to follow function
> all over the page.
> POEM
> }
Which reminds me... one of the less attractive features of here docs is
the fact that the quoted document always has to end in a newline. That
is annoying at times.
For example, I often use here docs as a template mechanism: convert the
original text file to a here doc, split into three parts: intro, main
body (loop body), outtro; and you can generate such a doc with as many
repetitions as you like. If the three parts may be split right after a
newline, as commonly in HTML, there's no problem. But sometimes you want
to split in the middle of a line.
If there was an easy way to chomp() that newline and return the
remainder of the string, that would solve this too. Like this?
sub chomped ($) {
chomp(my $s = shift);
return $s;
}
I don't really like this solution much. And it's not worth an extra
keyword, for chomped() to become a built-in.
This, in turn, reminds me of the other common problem, where s///
modifies a string, instead of returning a modified copy, as some people
would like.
Ain't such a chain of thoughts lovely... :-)
--
Bart.
