http://qs1969.pair.com?node_id=306864

agent has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

I know this question has been asked before here last year ..just want to know if there any good perl editors out there or any new ones. even though i use vi on unix , i would like to use a good one on windows for quick syntax checking etc.. thanks in advance !! agent

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: good perl editor
by matthewb (Curate) on Nov 13, 2003 at 18:32 UTC
Re: good perl editor
by bear0053 (Hermit) on Nov 13, 2003 at 17:58 UTC
    you can use vi on windows. i believe it is gvim. Vim61 there is also gnu emacs which has a windows version. also if you can't find either of them editplus is ok.
      gvim isn't vi on windows. gvim is one of many vi-lookalikes, and if it's ported to windows, it's one of many vi-lookalikes that's ported to windows. Most of the vi-lookalikes will do pretty much everything that vi can (and the few things they don't, you probably didn't know vi did that anyway), and a whole bunch more.

      Abigail

Re: good perl editor
by samtregar (Abbot) on Nov 13, 2003 at 18:01 UTC
Re: good perl editor
by AcidHawk (Vicar) on Nov 13, 2003 at 20:05 UTC

    You never mentioned whether or not you wanted a free one or if you would be willing to pay for it...

    I believe that Ultra Edit is worth every penny I paid for it. (v10.x goes for $30)

    Look here for a full list of features. The one I like is the ability to build your own usertools which is where I put perl -c %F where %F is the file I am working on. Now all I have to do is press a button on the toolbar and the file I am working on is saved and the syntax is checked with the output going to a piece of the screen at the bottom of the window.

    Another feature I really like is the ability to use regex for searching.

    -----
    Of all the things I've lost in my life, its my mind I miss the most.
Re: good perl editor
by ChrisR (Hermit) on Nov 13, 2003 at 20:26 UTC
    Check out Perl Programming Tools - (who, what, where, when, and why). My boss is actually the one that wrote that node in response to my request for some good perl tools. Being brought up in a windows world, I didn't appreciate vi. Since then we have tried a few but I still use vi for most everything. The more I work with vi, the more I like it. vi is most likely the editor of choice for most programmers on *nix (just a guess). I did find one shareware editor that I use on windows sometimes. It's pretty nice and will handle a lot more than perl. Check out MED - Programmer's Text Editor.
    Update
    I just checked the link above and it appears to not be working anymore. If I find a good link to their site, I'll post it back here.

    OK I found it: Utopia-Planitia.com

    That's strange. I thought they built galaxy class starships at Utopia Planitia not text editors.
Re: good perl editor
by jdtoronto (Prior) on Nov 13, 2003 at 18:01 UTC
Re: good perl editor
by monktim (Friar) on Nov 13, 2003 at 19:58 UTC
    I like this one http://open-perl-ide.sourceforge.net/. It has an integrated debugger and you can drag and drop variables to a watch window. The only knock I have is that you can only run one script at a time in the environment. I haven't upgraded it in a while so it may have more features.
Good perl editor? Yes, Crimson!
by woolfy (Chaplain) on Nov 13, 2003 at 23:15 UTC
    I am using Crimson Editor (a Win app), which is freeware, and has several nifty treats. I like the user interface, it looks good, it is fast, helpful, you can create your own macros, and I don't have to do silly things like save, ftp, open another window to execute the script, etc. Just one-click-while-editing-to-test-a-script...

    By the way, Crimson Editor has syntax files included in the ditribution for a lot of programming languages (not just Perl) and other types of apps where scripts are used, e.g. MySQL and Apache.

Re: good perl editor
by EdwardG (Vicar) on Nov 13, 2003 at 19:12 UTC
    <satire>
    I know this question has been asked before here last year ..just want to know if there any good religions out there or any new ones. even though i pray the rosary, i would like to be reincarnated as a camel.. thanks in advance !! agent of jihad
    </satire>

    Seriously though, take a(nother?) look at Vim for Perl developers

Re: good perl editor
by defyance (Curate) on Nov 13, 2003 at 23:36 UTC
    Recently I installed Ruby on my Win32 machine. With it came something I'd never heard of, SciTE. It's a SCIntilla based Text Editor that is proving to work completely for me. It has highlighting and build/compile/execute support for quite a few languages, including Perl. You can find it here. I mainly code in that and vim.

    --
    A conclusion is simply the place where someone got tired of thinking.

Re: good perl editor
by Popcorn Dave (Abbot) on Nov 14, 2003 at 00:46 UTC
    A couple of recommendations I can toss in to the mix:

    • ConTEXT is a free editor that can be configured quite quickly to syntax check and run perl programs. The upside to it is that it also has configurations for a whole host of other languages as well. You can get it here.

    • DZSoft is also an editor I've used and like but it's shareware (around $40). The upside is that it gives you the option of listing your variables in a left hand column and the line number in which each appears.

    Hope that helps!

    There is no emoticon for what I'm feeling now.

Re: good perl editor
by meetraz (Hermit) on Nov 13, 2003 at 21:27 UTC
    I use Edit Plus. It has some good code features, and it's pretty customizable. You can write your own scripts to color-code and auto-complete just about any type of file.
Re: good perl editor
by etcshadow (Priest) on Nov 13, 2003 at 21:32 UTC
    I'd definitey recommend Textpad. Very nice and fits very well into windows for a non-M$ product. As the name suggests, it is a logical (but far, far better) progression along the lines of Wordpad and Notepad.

    The perl syntax mode is not perfect (but whose is?), but it's still fairly good. Also, just as a general purpose text editor it is superb. I use it for far more than just perl editing. In fact, I rarely use it for perl editing any more... as I've been migrating more and more toward vim. However, vim (as much as I love it on *nix), doesn't fit very well into windows.


    ------------
    :Wq
    Not an editor command: Wq
Re: good perl editor
by Roger (Parson) on Nov 14, 2003 at 00:57 UTC
    The best commercial editor I think is Xarka Software's Opti-Perl. The license is very reasonable.

    I use the freeware ConText editor, which has many features I like. It is simple, fast and elegant.

Re: good perl editor
by michaeld (Monk) on Nov 14, 2003 at 10:13 UTC

    MED is great, but lately, I've been using Open Perl IDE

    Cheers,
    MichaelD

Re: good perl editor
by AidanLee (Chaplain) on Nov 13, 2003 at 18:03 UTC
    I'm a fan of both vim and jEdit