Editors for Perl

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

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Editors for Perl by brian_d_foy (Abbot) on Apr 23, 2005 at 01:18 UTC
perlfaq3 lists several editors for several platforms. -- brian d foy <brian@stonehenge.com>	[reply]
Re: Editors for Perl by jacques (Priest) on Apr 23, 2005 at 04:15 UTC
vim	[reply]
Re: Editors for Perl by prasadbabu (Prior) on Apr 23, 2005 at 00:50 UTC
Perl IDE, komodo are some of the perl editors used for perl. Perl IDE is free version where as komodo is not a free version. By using perl editors, it is easy to debug the program line by line, highlights syntax etc. Others might give better advantages of Perl Editors. Editor for Perl Programming will give some idea of Perl Editors. Prasad	[reply]
Re: Editors for Perl by ww (Archbishop) on Apr 23, 2005 at 01:52 UTC
also, my favorite in a windows environment, NoteTab (www.notetab.com), avail as free, light ($9.95) and pro ($19.95). Believe all accept "clip libs" -- helper packages that provide quick reference; template many common snippets, etc. However, do not yet know of one that color-codes elements of your code, which many (most?) of the others cited above do. If nx is your environment, vi, vim, emacs all have their adherents... and plusses and minuses which are, in some large measure, dependant on your tastes. If Linux, you can also look at Kate, Kwrite, etc, etc, etc. Picking one you really like will be harder than finding many that are OK. And as the way the perlfaq (linked above by BDF) is written will tell you, a good IDE may (YMMV) beat the tar out of "just an editor." good hunting.	[reply]
Re: Editors for Perl by merlyn (Sage) on Apr 23, 2005 at 02:10 UTC
GNU Emacs! -- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker Be sure to read my standard disclaimer if this is a reply.	[reply]
Re: Editors for Perl by hubb0r (Pilgrim) on Apr 23, 2005 at 04:15 UTC
Well, as a linux user that went from sysadmin-ing with some shell scripting into the role of full fledged developer over a number of years, I find vim to be my editor of choice. Never gave gnu-emacs a fair shot, but that's mostly due to the fact that both emacs and vi(m) have a fairly steep learning curve, and I haven't yet been able to take the plunge of learning another editing environment. I've found vim to be highly extensible and customizable to meet my coding needs. With the proper plugins and customization of my .vimrc, it does everything that I need/want. Whenever I say to myself "hmmm, it would be really nice if I could do x in vim..." I do a little bit of googling and find out that I in fact CAN do that, I just didn't know how. It definitely isn't a nice cozy WYSIWYG editor like you may find in an MS-Notepad or some of the other gui based editors (although gvim is much more user friendly if you have X installed). It does do all the things I need to help me write good code though. Good syntax highlighting, bracket jumping (for ensuring closing braces match opening braces), folding (hiding away portions of code into a "fold" that can be expanded/contracted), auto-indenting, regex style find/replace, shell interaction, split windows, diff, etc etc etc. Anything that you might think you want it to do, it most likely can do. That being said, I use vim all day every day, and I most likely don't use more than 30% - 40% of the available power of the program. And I also find that I learn something new on an (almost) daily basis with it. If you want a good GUI/WYSIWYG editor for perl, one of my ex-coworkers swore by Nedit. I used it a few times, but kept attempting to type vim commands at it and getting completely incorrect recults. I just find that after learning the power of a command driven interface, going back to point/click for what can be a 1 or 2 keystroke command is a big waste of time. It takes much longer to get to the mouse and move/click/move/click and then move hands back to the keyboard than just a couple of keystrokes.	[reply]
Re: Editors for Perl by jk2addict (Chaplain) on Apr 23, 2005 at 12:41 UTC
Let's not forget the EPIC plugin for the Eclipse IDE. /Blatant Whoring Ahead/ There's also a lot of useful comments on how ro run perl within the Eclipse IDE here. Personally, I just use plain old test editor with syntax highlightng (Textpad). We don't need no stinking IDE... :-)	[reply]
Re: Editors for Perl by jhourcle (Prior) on Apr 23, 2005 at 16:15 UTC
Besides the other past links that people have mentioned, you might also want to take a look at TheDamian's recommendations on setting up vim in Desparately seeking a bilingual vim/Emacs expert, and the resulting recommendations for emacs and BBEdit. As for the advantages of a few various text editors -- vim/vi/ex or something similar are installed on just about any unix-esque system. ex has advantages when your terminal type is screwed up, or you're coming in through a serial console, but I don't recommend line editors for serious coding efforts. (but they sure come in handy when you're trying to fix something that's broken). If you're on a mac, I highly recommend BBEdit or TextWrangler, if you can't justify the cost. (Unfortunately, the current versions of them require MacOS 10.3, and they don't have older versions available from their website, for those of us still using MacOS 10.2 or earlier.) As to the features -- well, it's really hard to say, as once you get used to using a program, you start taking them for granted, and forget about what it was like without them. I know that I make heavy use of its find/replace (using PCRE (Perl Compatible Regular Expressions)). You can also write scripts or filters to work on your files (again, using perl, if you wish), and you can add extra functionality with AppleScript. There's also syntax highlighting, split screen editing, notification of mismatched parens/braces/brackets, a menu to quickly jump between functions, integration with a few source control systems, and a whole bunch of other things that I'm forgetting about. Disclaimer: I have been a beta tester for BBEdit, so I may be biased in my opinions	[reply]
Re^2: Editors for Perl by jk2addict (Chaplain) on Apr 23, 2005 at 17:43 UTC
I miss BBEdit. Back when I was a Machead in the 7600 days, it was my staple along with Userland Frontier and HyperCard. When the Mac Mini finally hits a G5 nad comes <$500 WITH 512MB of ram, BBEdit will be the first thing I put on it.	[reply]
Re: Editors for Perl by Tanktalus (Canon) on Apr 23, 2005 at 14:24 UTC
What you've just encountered is called a religious war. Flamewars over this topic have never really died down on usenet newsgroups. Very dangerous question to ask - people get quite emotional and protective of their choice of editor. ;-) But, as long as everyone else is throwing in their favourite, mine is FTE. The Windows version is acceptable, but it's much better on OS/2 and Linux/Unix.	[reply]
Re: Editors for Perl by cbrandtbuffalo (Deacon) on Apr 23, 2005 at 13:29 UTC
Couple for the Mac: BBEdit is paid. TextWrangler is their free version. Affrus is also paid but has a free demo.	[reply]
Re: Editors for Perl by pffan239 (Beadle) on Apr 23, 2005 at 14:15 UTC
I like SciTe. Full featured, great syntax highlighting, tabs, folding. Worth a look.	[reply]
Re: Editors for Perl by zentara (Cardinal) on Apr 23, 2005 at 11:25 UTC
I use mcedit, the internal editor of Midnight Commander. It's advantages are: it is simple to use very nice colored syntax highlighting for Perl scripts, to run your script after an edit, you just hit enter on the file in the nice 2 panel file-list display. has the file management power of mc, just an escape away, like copy,rename, move, chown, chmod, search/replace,etc. Of course, Midnight Commander sucks on Windows, so it's really Linux only. I'm not really a human, but I play one on earth. flash japh	[reply]
Re: Editors for Perl by JanneVee (Friar) on Apr 23, 2005 at 20:15 UTC
I find myself a little torn between jEdit and vim for my editing needs. I like both.	[reply]
Re: Editors for Perl by chanio (Priest) on Apr 23, 2005 at 22:42 UTC
Besides the unbeatable big ones (Xemacs, Vim, etc.) if you are on Windows, EngInSite deserves a try. It works very well and is very easy to learn. I normally use xemacs although it requires patience to learn how to use it well. But I found this EngInSite in one of my searches for a perl editor that would also allow me to build a Tk screen to easily integrate with any script. Although this one doesn't do this, it would be great if they could add this feature in a future release... .{\('v')/} C H E E R U P ! _`(___)' ___a_l_b_e_r_t_o_________ Wherever I lay my KNOPPIX disk, a new FREE LINUX nation could be established.	[reply]
Re: Editors for Perl by FuBaR (Acolyte) on Apr 24, 2005 at 22:46 UTC
My Favorite is the OpenPerl IDE. It is just a basic editor with a few handy features. There may be better ones out there but I love this one.	[reply]
Re: Editors for Perl by Andre_br (Pilgrim) on Apr 25, 2005 at 20:19 UTC
Hello, I use Crimson Editor http://www.crimsoneditor.com/ wich has unbeliavable editing features, like searching and replacing all your cgi's in one shot, regular expressions ... everything I came to imagine they did. And it�s free...	[reply]