I have used vim/gvim for a long time. I doubt that you can achieve the level of integration that emacs provides (e.g., stepping you through the source code in sync with the state of the debugger (running the debugger in one window, and the source code in another)).

From perldoc perldebug :

(Historically, a similar setup for interacting with vi and the
X11 window system had also been available, but at the time of
this writing, no debugger support for vi currently exists.)
[download]

Tom Christiansen's .exrc file is available in Unix Power Tools, on page 570-572, snippet 31.09. Source code for the book is available here, and the file you want from in there is "upt2/exrc". But it does not do what you want, I think.

There is a Perl interface in vim/gvim (go help, search for perl, then follow the documentation pointers), but it accomplishes a different thing: it provides for Perl access to vim editing functions, basically.

My advice for you would be to go for emacs with the viper (vi emulation) package (I use this all time, and it works great).

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

:help design-not
VIM IS... NOT                        *design-not*

- Vim is not a shell or an Operating System.  You will not be able to 
+run a
  shell inside Vim or use it to control a debugger.  This should work 
+the
  other way around: Use Vim as a component from a shell or in an IDE.
  A satirical way to say this: "Unlike Emacs, Vim does not attempt to 
+include
  everything but the kitchen sink, but some people say that you can cl
+ean one
  with it.  ;-)"
- Vim is not a fancy GUI editor that tries to look nice at the cost of
  being less consistent over all platforms.  But functional GUI featur
+es are
  welcomed.
[download]

Where can I get Perl macros for vi?

For a complete version of Tom Christiansen's vi configuration file, se
+e http://www.perl.com/CPAN/authors/Tom_Christiansen/scripts/toms.exrc
+.gz, the standard benchmark file for vi
emulators. This runs best with nvi, the current version of vi out of B
+erkeley, which incidentally can be built with an embedded Perl interp
+reter -- see
http://www.perl.com/CPAN/src/misc.
[download]

I know that Tom Christiansen used to have his vi .exec file in his CPAN directory. That would be a good place to look for stuff like this.

Unfortunately, I can't seem to find it any more. Tom's directory is at http://www.cpan.org/modules/by-authors/id/T/TO/TOMC/ in case it reappears :).

"Perl makes the fun jobs fun
and the boring jobs bearable" - me

:!perl -d %

If you keep having to go into the debugger, try putting the -d on the #! line and then just:

:!%

single most useful thing I found today. thanks - Ben