The format routine will format under all circumstances even if the width isn't enough to contain the longest words. Text::Wrap will die under these circumstances, although I am told this is fixed. If columns is set to a small number and words are longer than that and the leading 'whitespace' than there will be a single word on each line. This will let you make a simple word list which could be indented or right aligned. This port is a superset of p5-Text-Format -- it includes the Text::NWrap module.