I am posting this as a challenge, mostly because I lack the perl skills to do it myslef, and I think that it would be a neat chunk of code.

I prepose developing a perl script that could golf perl code. I by no means imply that it is possible to write it in such a way as to rival human golfers, but there are several mechanical substitutions, such as replacing shift with pop, that perls ability at text manipulation should be able to make quick work of. This would eliminate the first couple of steps in golfing and leave just the creative manipulations for the expirienced golfer.

I think japhy's Golf Do's and Don'ts would make a good start for a specification. Here is some code for replacing shift with pop:

@code = ('shift($a, $b);', 'print @;');

foreach $line(@code){
 $a=$line;
 for($a=~ m/shift\((.*?)\)/){
        $a=~ s/shift\(//;
    $a=~s/\)\;//;
    @a=split(/,/ ,$a);
    @a  = reverse(@a);
    $line=~ s/shift\((.*?)\)/pop(@a)/;
 }

}
print @code, "\n";
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