三、在打印格式中顯示值
我們使用打印格式的主要原因當然是格式化存貯在簡單變量或數組變量中的值從而生成可讀性好的輸出，這一目的用“值域”來實現。每個值域指定一個值，如變量或表達式，調用write函數時，該值就以值域指定的格式顯示。
1、通用的打印格式
打印格式的一個缺點是定義中包含了變量名，例如：

format MYFORMAT =
==========================================================
The winning number is @<<<<< $winnum
==========================================================
.
當調用write輸出此格式時，必須記著它使用了變量$winnum。用子程序和局域變量就可以創建更通用的打印格式。下例從STDIN輸入一個文件并輸出五個出現頻率最高的字母及出現次數。

1 : #!/usr/local/bin/perl
2 :
3 : while ($line = ) {
4 : $line =~ tr/A-Z/a-z/;
5 : $line =~ s/[^a-z]//g;
6 : @letters = split(//, $line);
7 : foreach $letter (@letters) {
8 : $lettercount{$letter} += 1;
9 : }
10: }
11:
12: $~ = "WRITEHEADER";
13: write;
14: $count = 0;
15: foreach $letter (reverse sort occurrences
16: (keys(%lettercount))) {
17: &write_letter($letter, $lettercount{$letter});
18: last if (++$count == 5);
19: }
20:
21: sub occurrences {
22: $lettercount{$a} <=> $lettercount{$b};
23: }
24: sub write_letter {
25: local($letter, $value) = @_;
26:
27: $~ = "WRITELETTER";
28: write;
29: }
30: format WRITEHEADER =
31: The five most frequently occurring letters are:
32: .
33: format WRITELETTER =
34: @: @<<<<<<
35: $letter, $value
36: .
運行結果如下：

$ program
This is a test file.
This test file contains some input.
The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.
^D
The five most frequently occurring letters are:
t: 10
e: 9
i: 8
s: 7
o: 6
$