Text::Template v1.46

This is a library for generating form letters, building HTML pages, or

filling in templates generally.  A `template' is a piece of text that

has little Perl programs embedded in it here and there.  When you

`fill in' a template, you evaluate the little programs and replace

them with their values.  

Here's an example of a template:

	Dear {$title} {$lastname},

	It has come to our attention that you are delinquent in your

	{$monthname[$last_paid_month]} payment.  Please remit

	${sprintf("%.2f", $amount)} immediately, or your patellae may

	be needlessly endangered.

			Love,

			Mark "{nickname(rand 20)}" Dominus

The result of filling in this template is a string, which might look

something like this:

	Dear Mr. Gates,

	It has come to our attention that you are delinquent in your

	February payment.  Please remit

	$392.12 immediately, or your patellae may

	be needlessly endangered.

			Love,

			Mark "Vizopteryx" Dominus

You can store a template in a file outside your program.  People can

modify the template without modifying the program.  You can separate

the formatting details from the main code, and put the formatting

parts of the program into the template.  That prevents code bloat and

encourages functional separation.

You can fill in the template in a `Safe' compartment.  This means that

if you don't trust the person who wrote the code in the template, you

won't have to worry that they are tampering with your program when you

execute it.  

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Text::Template was originally released some time in late 1995 or early

1996.  After three years of study and investigation, I rewrote it from

scratch in January 1999.  The new version, 1.0, was much faster,

delivered better functionality and was almost 100% backward-compatible

with the previous beta versions.

I have added a number of useful features and conveniences since the

1.0 release, while still retaining backward compatibility.  With one

merely cosmetic change, the current version of Text::Template passes

the test suite that the old beta versions passed.

Questions or comments should be addressed to

mjd-perl-template+@plover.com.  This address goes directly to me, and

not to anyone else; it is not a mailing list address.

To receive occasional announcements of new versions of T::T, send an

empty note to mjd-perl-template-request@plover.com.  This mailing list

is not for discussion; it is for announcements only.  Therefore, there

is no address for sending messages to the list.

You can get the most recent version of Text::Template, news, comments,

and other collateral information from

<URL:http://www.plover.com/~mjd/perl/Template/>.

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What's new in v1.46 since v1.44:

        Thanks to Rik Signes, there is a new

        Text::Template->append_text_to_output method, which

        Text::Template always uses whenever it wants to emit output.

        You can subclass this to get control over the output, for

        example for postprocessing.

        A spurious warning is no longer emitted when the TYPE

        parameter to ->new is omitted.

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What's new in v1.44 since v1.43: 

This is a maintentance release.  There are no feature changes.

        _scrubpkg, which was responsible for eptying out temporary

        packages after the module had done with them, wasn't always

        working; the result was memory-leaks in long-running

        applications.  This should be fixed now, and there is a test

        in the test suite for it.

        Minor changes to the test suite to prevent spurious errors.

        Minor documentation changes.

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What's new in v1.43 since v1.42:

        The ->new method now fails immediately and sets

        $Text::Template::ERROR if the file that is named by a filename

        argument does not exist or cannot be opened for some other

        reason.  Formerly, the constructor would succeed and the

        ->fill_in call would fail.

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What's new in v1.42 since v1.41:

This is a maintentance release.  There are no feature changes.

        Fixed a bug relating to use of UNTAINT under perl 5.005_03 and

        possibly other versions.

        Taint-related tests are now more comprehensive.

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What's new in v1.41 since v1.40:

This is a maintentance release.  There are no feature changes.

        Tests now work correctly on Windows systems and possibly on

        other non-unix systems.

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What's new in v1.40 since v1.31:

        New UNTAINT option tells the module that it is safe to 'eval'

        code even though it has come from a file or filehandle.

        Code added to prevent memory leaks when filling many

        templates.  Thanks to Itamar Almeida de Carvalho.

        Bug fix:  $OUT was not correctly initialized when used in

        conjunction with SAFE.

        You may now use a glob ref when passing a filehandle to the

        ->new funcion.  Formerly, a glob was reuqired.

        New subclass:  Text::Template::Preprocess.  Just like

        Text::Template, but you may supply a PREPROCESS option in the

        constructor or the fill_in call; this is a function which

        receives each code fragment prior to evaluation, and which may

        modify and return the fragment; the modified fragment is what

        is evaluated.

        Error messages passed to BROKEN subroutines will now report

        the correct line number of the template at which the error

        occurred:

                Illegal division by zero at template line 37.

        If the template comes from a file, the filename will be

        reported as well:

                Illegal division by zero at catalog.tmpl line 37.

        INCOMPATIBLE CHANGE:

        The format of the default error message has changed.  It used

        to look like:

                Program fragment at line 30 delivered error ``Illegal division by zero''

        It now looks like:

                Program fragment delivered error ``Illegal division by zero at catalog.tmpl line 37''

        Note that the default message used to report the line number

        at which the program fragment began; it now reports the line

        number at which the error actually occurred.

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What's new in v1.31 since v1.23:

	Just bug fixes---fill_in_string was failing.  Thanks to 

        Donald L. Greer Jr. for the test case.

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What's new in v1.23 since v1.22:

	Small bug fix:  DELIMITER and other arguments were being

	ignored in calls to fill_in_file and fill_this_in.  (Thanks to

	Jonathan Roy for reporting this.)

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What's new in v1.22 since v1.20:

	You can now specify that certain Perl statements be prepended

	to the beginning of every program fragment in a template,

	either per template, or for all templates, or for the duration

	of only one call to fill_in.  This is useful, for example, if

	you want to enable `strict' checks in your templates but you

	don't want to manually add `use strict' to the front of every

	program fragment everywhere.

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What's new in v1.20 since v1.12:

	You can now specify that the program fragment delimiters are

	strings other than { and }.  This has three interesting

	effects: First, it changes the delimiter strings.  Second, it

	disables the special meaning of \, so you have to be really,

	really sure that the delimiters will not appear in your

	templates.  And third, because of the simplifications

	introduced by the elimination of \ processing, template

	parsing is 20-25% faster.

	See the manual section on `Alternative Delimiters'.

	Fixed bug having to do with undefined values in HASH options.

	In particular, Text::Template no longer generates a warning if

	you try to give a variable an undefined value.

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What's new in v1.12 since v1.11:

	I forgot to say that Text::Template ISA Exporter, so the

	exported functions never got exported.  Duhhh!

	Template TYPEs are now case-insensitive.  The `new' method now

	diagnoses attempts to use an invalid TYPE.

	More tests for these things.

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What's new in v1.11 since v1.10:

	Fixed a bug in the way backslashes were processed.  The 1.10

	behavior was incompatible with the beta versions and was also

	inconvenient.  (`\n' in templates was replaced with `n' before

	it was given to Perl for evaluation.)  The new behavior is

	also incompatible with the beta versions, but it is only a

	little bit incompatible, and it is probbaly better.

	Documentation for the new behavior, and tests for the bug.

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What's new in v1.10 since v1.03:

	New OUTPUT option delivers template results directly to a

	filehandle instead of making them into a string.  Saves space

	and time. 

	PACKAGE and HASH now work intelligently with SAFE.

	Fragments may now output data directly to the template, rather

	than having to arrange to return it as a return value at the

	end.  This means that where you used to have to write this:

			{ my $blist = '';

		          foreach $i (@items) {

		            $blist .= qq{  * $i\n};

		          }    

		          $blist;

		        } 

	You can now write this instead, because $OUT is special.

			{ foreach $i (@items) {

		            $OUT.= "  * $i\n";

		          }    

		        } 

	(`A spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down.')

	Fixed some small bugs.  Worked around a bug in Perl that does

	the wrong thing with $x = <Y> when $x contains a glob.

	More documentation.  Errors fixed.

	Lots more tests.  

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What's new in v1.03 since v1.0:

	Code added to support HASH option to fill_in.

	(Incl. `_gensym' function.)

	Documentation for HASH.

	New test file for HASH.

	Note about failure of lexical variables to propagate into

 	templates.  Why does this surprise people?

	Bug fix: program fragments are evaluated in an environment with

 	`no strict' by default.  Otherwise, you get a lot of `Global

 	symbol "$v" requires explicit package name' failures.  Why didn't

 	the test program pick this up?  Because the only variable the test

 	program ever used was `$a', which is exempt.  Duhhhhh.

	Fixed the test program.

	Various minor documentation fixes.

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Improvements of 1.0 over the old 0.1beta:

New features:

      At least twice as fast 

      Better support for filling out the same template more than once 

      Now supports evaluation of program fragments in Safe

      compartments. (Thanks, Jonathan!)  

      Better argument syntax 

      More convenience functions 

      The parser is much better and simpler. 

      Once a template is parsed, the parsed version is stored so that

      it needn't be parsed again.  

      BROKEN function behavior is rationalized. You can now pass an

      arbitrary argument to your BROKEN function, or return a value

      from it to the main program.  

      Documentation overhauled.