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From: PerlFAQ Server on 5 Jun 2010 00:00
This is an excerpt from the latest version perlfaq4.pod, which
comes with the standard Perl distribution. These postings aim to
reduce the number of repeated questions as well as allow the community
to review and update the answers. The latest version of the complete
perlfaq is at http://faq.perl.org .

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4.38: Why don't my <<HERE documents work?

Check for these three things:

There must be no space after the << part.
There (probably) should be a semicolon at the end.
You can't (easily) have any space in front of the tag.

If you want to indent the text in the here document, you can do this:

# all in one
($VAR = <<HERE_TARGET) =~ s/^\s+//gm;
your text
goes here
HERE_TARGET

But the HERE_TARGET must still be flush against the margin. If you want
that indented also, you'll have to quote in the indentation.

($quote = <<' FINIS') =~ s/^\s+//gm;
...we will have peace, when you and all your works have
perished--and the works of your dark master to whom you
would deliver us. You are a liar, Saruman, and a corrupter
of men's hearts. --Theoden in /usr/src/perl/taint.c
FINIS
$quote =~ s/\s+--/\n--/;

A nice general-purpose fixer-upper function for indented here documents
follows. It expects to be called with a here document as its argument.
It looks to see whether each line begins with a common substring, and if
so, strips that substring off. Otherwise, it takes the amount of leading
whitespace found on the first line and removes that much off each
subsequent line.

sub fix {
local $_ = shift;
my ($white, $leader); # common whitespace and common leading string
if (/^\s*(?:([^\w\s]+)(\s*).*\n)(?:\s*\1\2?.*\n)+$/) {
($white, $leader) = ($2, quotemeta($1));
} else {
($white, $leader) = (/^(\s+)/, '');
}
s/^\s*?$leader(?:$white)?//gm;
return $_;
}

This works with leading special strings, dynamically determined:

$remember_the_main = fix<<' MAIN_INTERPRETER_LOOP';
@@@ int
@@@ runops() {
@@@ SAVEI32(runlevel);
@@@ runlevel++;
@@@ while ( op = (*op->op_ppaddr)() );
@@@ TAINT_NOT;
@@@ return 0;
@@@ }
MAIN_INTERPRETER_LOOP

Or with a fixed amount of leading whitespace, with remaining indentation
correctly preserved:

$poem = fix<<EVER_ON_AND_ON;
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say.
--Bilbo in /usr/src/perl/pp_ctl.c
EVER_ON_AND_ON



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corrections to examples that do not work on particular platforms.
Working code is greatly appreciated.

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