Re: report generation with format/write

[email protected] writes:
: Does anyone actually teach report generation with format/write?  I
: haven't really seen anyone using it much in the last few years, but I've
: just had a corporate client ask us to teach "reports" in Perl.
: 
: It's not part of our standard introductory Perl course, and to be honest
: I'm dreading having to write it ... ick ick ick.

Unless line printers come back into vogue, I wouldn't put a lot of
stress on it.  These days, most reports are printed on browser screens.

The fact is, the whole fixed-width character culture is in serious
trouble with the advent of Unicode.  Even xterm is having to come to
terms with double-wide characters these days.  We'll probably have to
do something similar with format/write.  (What we probably ought to do
is redo the report writer to spit out XML tables or some such. :-)/2

On the other hand, maybe fixed-width characters will be viewed as retro
and cool in 5 years.  You never know, you know...

Larry