=over =item formline PICTURE,LIST X This is an internal function used by L|/format>s, though you may call it, too. It formats (see L) a list of values according to the contents of PICTURE, placing the output into the format output accumulator, L|perlvar/$^A> (or C<$ACCUMULATOR> in L). Eventually, when a L|/write FILEHANDLE> is done, the contents of L|perlvar/$^A> are written to some filehandle. You could also read L|perlvar/$^A> and then set L|perlvar/$^A> back to C<"">. Note that a format typically does one L|/formline PICTURE,LIST> per line of form, but the L|/formline PICTURE,LIST> function itself doesn't care how many newlines are embedded in the PICTURE. This means that the C<~> and C<~~> tokens treat the entire PICTURE as a single line. You may therefore need to use multiple formlines to implement a single record format, just like the L|/format> compiler. Be careful if you put double quotes around the picture, because an C<@> character may be taken to mean the beginning of an array name. L|/formline PICTURE,LIST> always returns true. See L for other examples. If you are trying to use this instead of L|/write FILEHANDLE> to capture the output, you may find it easier to open a filehandle to a scalar (C<< open my $fh, ">", \$output >>) and write to that instead. =back