I really like this approach, thanks for suggesting it. I've had to go in and modify some Python scripts to match changes in the source code, and it's usually quite a pain to find out where things are being set/called/parsed/whatever. Anything I can do to make it easier will definitely be appreciated by non-Perl programmers.

Of course since it's Monday (that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it) I still feel like I'm writing very messy code. Any suggestions on the added sub would be appreciated.

Also note that the header files are auto-generated by a tool we're using, so the format of the struct definitions is always the same. And my subroutine takes this into account -- it fails horribly with comments in the code, but works just fine for the "live" code.

use strict;
use warnings;
use Data::Dumper;

my %default_values = ( 'float' => 0,
                       'int' => 3, # Unique value for visibility durin
+g testing
                       'bool' => 'false'
                       );
my %structs;

parse_struct_definitions();
print Dumper(%structs);

sub parse_struct_definitions {
    # Reads the typedef struct lines in the __DATA__ section to popula
+te the
    # %structs hash.  Created for simple updates to the defined struct
+ures
    # (simply copy and paste from the header files into the DATA secti
+on
    # below)

    local $/ = 'typedef struct {';
    while (my $line = <DATA>) {
        chomp $line;
        next if $line !~ /\w/;
        
        # For me to parse out the data more easily:
        $line =~ s/\n/ /g;
        $line =~ s/\s+/ /g;

        # Break the line into members and the struct name
        my ($member_string, $name) = $line =~ /([^\}]+)\s*\}\s*(.+)/;
        my @members = split ';', $member_string;
        $name =~ tr/; //d;

        foreach my $member (@members) {
            next if $member !~ /\w/;
            my ($type, $member_name) = split " ", $member;

            push @{$structs{$name}}, [ $type, $member_name, $default_v
+alues{$type} ];
        }
    }
} # end of parse_struct_definitions

__DATA__
typedef struct {
    float one;
    float two;
    int   three;
    bool  potato;
} struct_name;

typedef struct {
    float one; /* 0.0 */
    float two; /* 0.0 */
    int   three; /* 0 */
    bool  potato; /* false */
} struct_name_with_comments;
[download]

If you change your data to:

typedef struct {
    float one;
    float two;
    int   three;
    bool  potato;
} struct_name;

typedef struct {
    float one; /* 1.1 */
    float two; /* 2.2 */
    int   three; /* 3 */
    bool  potato; /* true */
} struct_name_with_comments;
[download]

You get the following (wrapped to compress):

$VAR1 = 'struct_name_with_comments';
$VAR2 = [
          ['float', 'one', 0],
          ['/*', '1.1', undef],
          ['/*', '2.2', undef],
          ['/*', '3', undef],
          ['/*', 'true', undef]
        ];
$VAR3 = 'struct_name';
$VAR4 = [
          ['float','one',0],
          ['float', 'two', 0],
          ['int', 'three', 3],
          ['bool', 'potato', 'false']
        ];
[download]

There appear to be bugs :).

Given you are $line =~ s/\n/ /g; and $line =~ s/\s+/ /g; you could just $line =~ s/[\n\s]+/ /g;.

<>.The use of $/ is nice. Good to see someone remembering it's there.

---

DWIM is Perl's answer to Gödel

There appear to be bugs :).

Um, yeah, I mentioned as much. Last (non-code) paragraph from my previous post:

...the format of the struct definitions is always the same. And my subroutine takes this into account -- it fails horribly with comments in the code, but works just fine for the "live" code.

I originally had only one of the s/// operations, then was playing around with another -- now that you point out the combination of the two it's very obvious. Doh.