=over

=item formline PICTURE,LIST
X<formline>

This is an internal function used by L<C<format>|/format>s, though you
may call it, too.  It formats (see L<perlform>) a list of values
according to the contents of PICTURE, placing the output into the format
output accumulator, L<C<$^A>|perlvar/$^A> (or C<$ACCUMULATOR> in
L<English>).  Eventually, when a L<C<write>|/write FILEHANDLE> is done,
the contents of L<C<$^A>|perlvar/$^A> are written to some filehandle.
You could also read L<C<$^A>|perlvar/$^A> and then set
L<C<$^A>|perlvar/$^A> back to C<"">.  Note that a format typically does
one L<C<formline>|/formline PICTURE,LIST> per line of form, but the
L<C<formline>|/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<C<format>|/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<C<formline>|/formline PICTURE,LIST> always returns true.  See
L<perlform> for other examples.

If you are trying to use this instead of L<C<write>|/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