Windows Monks,

As follow-on to my previous meditation regarding Notepad++ Integrated Perl Debugging, I've been doing other things with Notepad++ to make it more friendly when I write Perl (of which I've been doing more than usual lately).

One thing I did was to get Python debugging working the same way as with Perl. In case you're interested, see here: http://vinsworldcom.blogspot.com/2015/08/notepad-dbgp-and-python.html.

This got me thinking as I looked in the "Function List" window at Python code:

file.py
 +[Class]h_main
   __init__
 +[Class]h_base
   toXML
   convert
 main
[download]

Why does the "Function List" window show Python classes, but not Perl by default? Of course by Perl class, I mean 'package <name>'. All I would see was a list of subs. Take the following example program:

#!perl

use strict;
use warnings;

package MyPkg;
sub one {
    1;
}
sub two {
    1;
}
1;

package main;

my $p = pre();
print $p . MyPkg->one;

sub pre {
    return "ONE = ";
}
[download]

The Notepad++ Function List is:

file.pl
 one
 two
 pre
[download]

But there are clearly "classes" (read: packages) under which I'd like my subs grouped. Thankfully, Notepad++ allows customization of a file in the Notepad++ top level directory called 'functionList.xml' (documentation: https://notepad-plus-plus.org/features/function-list.html). A quick web search turned up a partial solution and with some more tweaking I finally got it to display:

file.pl
 +[Class]MyPkg
   one
   two
 +[Class]main
   pre
[download]

If there are no "packages", then the original display of just filename with the subs is what is displayed. I even tweaked it a bit to ignore stuff after __END__, so any "sub name" that appears in POD won't be mistakenly added to the Function List. I've tested it by viewing a few of my scripts, some modules and a few "custom" codes to demonstrate different use cases. So far, so good.

The solution; save a copy of your existing 'functionList.xml' to something like 'functionList.xml.ORIG' (just in case you want to revert back), open the existing 'functionList.xml' file, find the Perl parser lines:

<parser id="perl_function" displayName="Perl" ...
  ...
</parser>
[download]

and replace the whole lot with:

<parser id="perl_function" displayName="Perl" commentExpr="(#.*?$|(__E
+ND__.*\Z))">
  <classRange mainExpr="(?&lt;=^package).*?(?=\npackage|\Z)">
    <className>
      <nameExpr expr="\s\K[^;]+"/>
    </className>
    <function mainExpr="^[\s]*(?&lt;!#)[\s]*sub[\s]+[\w]+[\s]*\(?[^\)\
+(]*?\)?[\n\s]*\{">
      <functionName>
        <funcNameExpr expr="(sub[\s]+)?\K[\w]+"/>
      </functionName>
    </function>
  </classRange>
  <function mainExpr="^[\s]*(?&lt;!#)[\s]*sub[\s]+[\w]+[\s]*\(?[^\)\(]
+*?\)?[\n\s]*\{">
    <functionName>
      <nameExpr expr="(?:sub[\s]+)?\K[\w]+"/>
    </functionName>
  </function>
</parser>
[download]