http://qs321.pair.com?node_id=92897


in reply to My day with Damian Conway

I never saw any great problem with this: 

sub Unindent {

    my $unindent = shift;
    $unindent =~ s/^[ \t]+//gm;
  return $unindent;
}
...

    $message = Unindent <<"    MESSAGE";
    A fatal die was trapped by the $scriptname die nice routine:
    Time:          $datetime
    List name:     $list_name
    Script name:   $scriptname
    Package:       $package
    File:          $file
    Line Number:   $line
    Error Message: $message
    MESSAGE
    print $message;

....

[download]

cheers

tachyon </code>

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Unindenting here-docs (Re: My day with Damian Conway)
by tye (Sage) on Jan 11, 2002 at 21:09 UTC

    Yes, that is fine. The problems come in when you want to strip some of the leading whitespace: 

        print unindent( <<"    END" );
        Usage: $0 [flags] [args]
        Gropples the snarflog.
          -v       Verbose.
          -t mode  Mode of groppling to use.  "mode" can be:
                   fast  Minimize execution time.
                   hard  Maximize decryption time.
                   wide  Minimize alphabet size.
        Do not use on UTF8 files.
    END

    [download]
    Any attempt to write an unindent() for the above will run into problems in the face of 1) editors that insert tabs when maintenance work modifies the text, and 2) people who don't agree on how far apart tabstops should be set.

    The only solution I've found that I like goes something like this: 

    sub unindent { s/^\s*\S//gm }

    print unindent( <<"    END" );
        .Usage: $0 [flags] [args]
        .Gropples the snarflog.
        .  -v       Verbose.
        .  -t mode  Mode of groppling to use.  "mode" can be:
        .           fast  Minimize execution time.
        .           hard  Maximize decryption time.
        .           wide  Minimize alphabet size.
        .Do not use on UTF8 files.
    END

    [download]

            - tye (but my friends call me "Tye")
[reply]
[d/l]
[select]
      sub unindent {
    my $str = shift;
    (my $s) = $str =~ m/^(\s+)/;
    $str =~ s/^$s//gm;
  return $str;
}

      [download]

      This will look at the first line and extract that much leading whitespace from every line so does what you want without the .

      cheers

      tachyon

      s&&rsenoyhcatreve&&&s&n.+t&"$'$`$\"$\&"&ee&&y&srve&&d&&print

[reply]
[d/l]

        Um, no, you missed the whole point. 

        print unquote( <<"    TEST" );
    First line
    Second line
        Third line
        Fourth line
    TEST

        [download]
        Tell me what that should produce and I'll tell you what my tab stops were set to and that you were wrong. :) (And don't be fooled by how your browser happens to display that code.)

                - tye (but my friends call me "Tye")
[reply]
[d/l]

In Section Meditations