Use emacs in batch mode.

With this emacs lisp code in file "perl-indent.el":

(cperl-mode)
(indent-region 0 (buffer-size)  nil)
(save-buffer)
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And this emacs command line call:

> emacs -batch try.pl -l .emacs -l perl-indent.el
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This file "try.pl":

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;

for (1) { print "emacs rules"; }

while (1) { print " ... at least in viper mode\n"; }
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turns into:

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;

for (1) {
    print "emacs rules";
}

while (1) {
    print " ... at least in viper mode\n";
}
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The call to the ".emacs" initialization file is necessary since emacs won't load it per default in batch mode, and you want your personal indentation preferences to be used, of course.

Christian Lemburg
Brainbench MVP for Perl
http://www.brainbench.com

This is very cool, clemburg. ++ for that. I was going to comment about cperl-mode, but I didn't know how to automate the process. Thanks!

Just for the sake of completeness, be aware that cperl sometimes breaks with funky perl code such as regexes, here documents, unusual quoting and things like that. But other than that it's an excellent way of doing it.

For printing Perl code, I usually use xemacs' "pretty-print" option, which is loaded with some package I can't remember right now. I don't know how to invoke it in batch mode though - you have to manually load the file and select the option from the menu. Pretty-print generates postscript according to your current font-lock settings, so you get colors (shading in a b/w printer), bold, etc.

--ZZamboni

Yup, you are right about cperl mode. It's just that I don't know a better replacement. In my experience, nearly all modes for Perl break on complicated constructs (this is BTW a good incentive to keep your Perl readable).

If you can find out where this "pretty-print" option comes from, it should not be hard to automate it, too - I will be glad to help (though I don't use xemacs, but GNU emacs, and pretty-print is not there in my emacs :-( ... might be the incentive to go for xemacs?).

Christian Lemburg
Brainbench MVP for Perl
http://www.brainbench.com

perl -MO=Deparse script.pl
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Autark.

On ZZamboni's request, this is the emacs code you will need to print a postscript copy of your pretty-printed perl code (in file "perl-indent-ps.el"):

(cperl-mode)
(indent-region 0 (buffer-size)  nil)
(save-buffer)
(ps-print-buffer (cond (command-line-args-left 
                        (car command-line-args-left))
                       (t nil)))
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(Sorry about the peculiar indentation, fellow LISPers, but the formatter here makes it necessary to do something like this.)

You have to call emacs like this to make it work:

> emacs -batch try.pl -l .emacs -l perl-indent-ps.el try.ps
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If you omit the last argument in the preceding command line, your postscript will be send to the printer (at least this is what my emacs docs say, I could not test this since there is no printer hooked up to the server I currently work on).

Christian Lemburg
Brainbench MVP for Perl
http://www.brainbench.com