Huh. Cool. Yeah, that would work (via perl -x ~/.XCompose-ordering). Apparently there aren't any ill effects from even adding the following to .XCompose-ordering:

"
#!perl -i.bak
@ARGV = ($0);
while (<>) {
    $end = 1 if /^__END__/;
    print if $end < 2;
    $end++ if /^"/ and $end;
    if (eof) {
        open my $f, "</usr/share/X11/locale/$ENV{LANG}/Compose" or die
+ "<$!";
        print for <$f>; # manipulate the line here
        close $f;
    }
}
__END__
"
# normal lines start here
# etc. etc.

[download]

But I suspect this is just a consequence of .XCompose files just ignoring ill-formed lines. (and not because it accepts multi-line strings -- note that I embedded several double-quotes.)

Another interesting approach I tried was to simply add the following header:

#!/bin/env updater
# perl -lanwe '(...the script from before...)' inputfile
# ...
# the normal output...
# ...

[download]

~/bin/updater was:

#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;
my $script = '';
my $out = '';
my ($file) = @ARGV;
while (<>) {
    next unless s/^(#\s*)//;
    $script .= $_ unless $. == 1;
    $out .= "$1$_";
}
open STDOUT, '>', $file;
print $out;
open my $pipe, "| $ENV{SHELL}";
print $pipe $script;
close $pipe;

[download]

(NB. this doesn't make a backup like the other way.) That way, I can make .XCompose-ordering itself executable, and then simply run it to regenerate it. But, it has the advantage that it works for any file format that uses '#' comments.

In reply to Re^4: Best way to keep script with generated output by benizi
in thread Best way to keep script with generated output by benizi

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