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<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE>A Brief Perltidy Tutorial</TITLE>
<LINK REV="made" HREF="mailto:perl@packages.debian.org">
</HEAD>
<BODY>
<A NAME="__index__"></A>
<!-- INDEX BEGIN -->
<UL>
<LI><A HREF="#a brief perltidy tutorial">A Brief Perltidy Tutorial</A></LI>
<UL>
<LI><A HREF="#a first test">A First Test</A></LI>
<LI><A HREF="#making backups">Making Backups</A></LI>
<LI><A HREF="#tabs or spaces">Tabs or Spaces?</A></LI>
<LI><A HREF="#style variations, or, what are all of those other parameters for">Style Variations, or, What are All of Those Other Parameters For?</A></LI>
<LI><A HREF="#the log file">The Log File</A></LI>
<LI><A HREF="#using perltidy as a filter on selected text from an editor">Using Perltidy as a Filter on Selected Text from an Editor</A></LI>
<LI><A HREF="#summary">Summary</A></LI>
</UL>
</UL>
<!-- INDEX END -->
<HR>
<P>
<H1><A NAME="a brief perltidy tutorial">A Brief Perltidy Tutorial</A></H1>
<P>Perltidy can save you a lot of tedious editing if you spend a few
minutes learning to use it effectively. There are a large number of
options available for customizing it, but for many programmers the
default parameter set will be satisfactory, with perhaps a few
additional parameters to account for style preferences.</P>
<P>This tutorial assumes that perltidy has been installed on your system.
Installation instructions accompany the package. To follow along with
this tutorial, please find a small Perl script and place a copy in a
temporary directory. For example, here is a small script (from the book
Learning Perl 2nd edition, by Randall Schwartz and Tom Christiansen
<A HREF="http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/lperl2/">http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/lperl2/</A>):</P>
<PRE>
#Learning Perl Appendix A, Exercise 4.2
print "What temperature is it? ";
chop($temperature = <STDIN>);
if ($temperature > 75) {
print "Too hot!\n";
} elsif ($temperature < 68) {
print "Too cold!\n";
} else {
print "Just right!\n";
}</PRE>
<P>It is included in the <EM>docs</EM> section of the distribution.</P>
<P>
<H2><A NAME="a first test">A First Test</A></H2>
<P>Assume that the name of your script is <EM>testfile.pl</EM>. You can reformat it
with the default options to use the style recommended in the perlstyle man
pages with the command:</P>
<PRE>
perltidy testfile.pl</PRE>
<P>Try it now. For safety, perltidy never overwrites your original file.
In this case, its output will go to a file named <EM>testfile.pl.tdy</EM>,
which you should examine now with your editor. Here is what the above
file looks like with the default options:</P>
<PRE>
#Learning Perl Appendix A, Exercise 4.2
print "What temperature is it? ";
chop( $temperature = <STDIN> );
if ( $temperature > 75 ) {
print "Too hot!\n";
}
elsif ( $temperature < 68 ) {
print "Too cold!\n";
}
else {
print "Just right!\n";
}</PRE>
<P>If you are executing perltidy on a single file, and you do not like the
default name, you can control the name of the output file with the <STRONG>-o</STRONG>
parameter. Try the following command,</P>
<PRE>
perltidy testfile.pl -o=testfile.new.pl</PRE>
<P>which will create a file named <EM>testfile.new.pl</EM>.</P>
<P>
<H2><A NAME="making backups">Making Backups</A></H2>
<P>In an actual project, at this point you could make a backup copy of the
original script and then rename <EM>testfile.pl.tdy</EM> to be <EM>testfile.pl</EM>.
While perltidy is a very reliable program, it is very important to have
a standard procedure for backing up your script in case something goes
wrong. For a small project, a simple backup procedure using RCS could
be as follows (see the <CODE>rcsintro(1)</CODE> man page).</P>
<PRE>
ci -l testfile.pl
perltidy testfile.pl</PRE>
<P>A good practice is to use a file comparison utility, such as diff, to
examine the differences between the original and reformatted files.
Then, if no problems are seen, update to the new version using</P>
<PRE>
mv testfile.pl testfile.pl.bak
mv testfile.pl.tdy testfile.pl</PRE>
<P>This has the effect of keeping a historical record of the script in the RCS
directory, and a current separate backup as <EM>testfile.pl.bak</EM>. Of course, you
should make regular additional backups to other media as well. Perltidy, a
relatively large script, was itself developed with this backup procedure.</P>
<P>
<H2><A NAME="tabs or spaces">Tabs or Spaces?</A></H2>
<P>With indentation, there is always a tab issue to resolve. By default,
perltidy will use leading ascii space characters instead of tabs. The
reason is that this will be displayed correctly by virtually all
editors. It is the author's recommendation that tabs not be used for
indentation, but if you prefer, you may choose to use one leading tab
character for each level of indentation by using the <STRONG>-t</STRONG> flag. Most
editors display tabs as 8 spaces, but they normally have a switch to
change this. If you choose tabs, you should use this switch to change
tabs to display as 4 columns, because that is the default assumption
made by perltidy in aligning lists and side comments vertically.</P>
<P>(The number 4 is the indentation spacing suggested in <CODE>perlstyle(1)</CODE> for Perl
scripts, but you may change this to any number ``n'' of columns with the
flag <STRONG>-i=n</STRONG>).</P>
<P>For example, the commands for the vim editor are as follows.
To change to 4 spaces per tab, use ``:set ts=4'' and ``:set sw=4''. If you are
using real spaces instead of tabs, as recommended, you will also
want to expand tabs to spaces with ``:set et''. All of these commands can
be put in a comment (modeline) at the end of a script like this:</P>
<P># vi: set ts=4 sw=4 et:</P>
<P>Fortunately, perltidy makes it easy to change indentation spaces and tabbing
assumptions at any time.</P>
<P>To get some practice, try these examples, and examine the resulting
<EM>testfile.pl.tdy</EM> file:</P>
<PRE>
perltidy -i=3 testfile.pl</PRE>
<P>This changes the default of 4 spaces per indentation level to be 3. Now
just to emphasize the point, try this and examine the result:</P>
<PRE>
perltidy -i=0 testfile.pl</PRE>
<P>There will be no indentation at all in this case.</P>
<P>Now try using tabs with the <STRONG>-t</STRONG> command</P>
<PRE>
perltidy -t testfile.pl</PRE>
<P>Look at the file with your editor, and tell it to display tabs
as 4 columns so that the file displays properly.</P>
<P>This is a good place to mention a few points regarding the input flags.
First, for each option, there are two forms, a long form and a short
form, and either may be used.</P>
<P>For example, if you want to change the number of columns corresponding to one
indentation level to 3 (from the default of 4) you may use either</P>
<PRE>
-i=3 or --indent-columns=3</PRE>
<P>The short forms are convenient for entering parameters by hand, whereas
the long forms, though often ridiculously long, are self-documenting and
therefore useful in configuration scripts. You may use either one or
two dashes ahead of the parameters. Also, the '=' sign is optional,
and may be a single space instead. However, the value of a parameter
must NOT be adjacent to the flag, like this <STRONG>-i3</STRONG> (WRONG). Also,
flags must be input separately, never bundled together.</P>
<P>
<H2><A NAME="style variations, or, what are all of those other parameters for">Style Variations, or, What are All of Those Other Parameters For?</A></H2>
<P>Perltidy has to make some kind of default selection of formatting
options, and its choice is to try to follow the suggestions in the
perlstyle man pages. Many programmers more or less follow these
suggestions with the exception that ``cuddled elses'' are widely used. If
you prefer cuddled elses, use the <STRONG>-ce</STRONG> flag. If you
are unfamiliar with this term, a ``cuddled else'' is something like this:
'} else {', so named because the ``else'' has been ``cuddled'' between the
two braces.</P>
<P>While style preferences vary, most people would agree that it is important to
maintain a uniform style within a script, and this is a major benefit provided
by perltidy. Once you have decided on which, if any, special options you
prefer, you may want to avoid having to enter them each time you run it. You
can do this by creating a special file named <EM>.perltidyrc</EM> in either your home
directory or your current directory. (Note the leading ``.'' in the file name).
Perltidy will first look in your current directory, and if it does not find
one, it will look in your home directory. This file is free format. It is
simply a list of parameters, just as they would be entered on a command line.
Any number of lines may be used, with any number of parameters per line,
although it may be easiest to read with one parameter per line. Blank lines
are ignored, and text after a '#' is ignored to the end of a line.</P>
<P>Here is an example of a <EM>.perltidyrc</EM> file:</P>
<PRE>
# This is a simple of a .perltidyrc configuration file
# This implements a highly spaced style
-bl # braces on new lines
-pt=0 # parens not tight at all
-bt=0 # braces not tight
-sbt=0 # square brackets not tight</PRE>
<P>If you experiment with this file, remember that it is in your directory,
since if you are running on a Unix system, files beginning with
a ``.'' are normally hidden. If you are unsure if a <EM>.perltidyrc</EM> file is in
effect, you can always use the <STRONG>-log</STRONG> flag to create a .LOG file and
look at the top. It will tell you.</P>
<P>If you have a <EM>.perltidyrc</EM> file, and want perltidy to ignore it,
use the <STRONG>-npro</STRONG> flag on the command line.</P>
<P>
<H2><A NAME="the log file">The Log File</A></H2>
<P>One last topic that needs to be touched upon concerns the <EM>.LOG</EM> file.
This is where perltidy writes messages that are not normally of any
interest, but which just might occasionally be useful. This file is not
saved, though, unless there is an error or you ask for it to be saved.</P>
<P>There are a couple of ways to ask perltidy to save a log file. For a
relatively sparce log file use</P>
<PRE>
perltidy -log testfile.pl</PRE>
<P>and for a verbose log file use</P>
<PRE>
perltidy -g testfile.pl</PRE>
<P>The difference is that the first form only saves detailed information
at least every 50th line, while the second form saves detailed information
about every line.</P>
<P>So returning to our example, lets force perltidy to save a
verbose log file by issuing the following command</P>
<PRE>
perltidy -g testfile.pl</PRE>
<P>You will find that a file named <EM>testfile.pl.LOG</EM> has been
created in your directory.</P>
<P>Take a few minutes to examine this file. It is a text file with a
combination of warning messages and informative messages.
All you need to know for now is that it exists.</P>
<P>
<H2><A NAME="using perltidy as a filter on selected text from an editor">Using Perltidy as a Filter on Selected Text from an Editor</A></H2>
<P>Most programmer's editors allow a selected group of lines to be passed
through an external filter. Perltidy has been designed to work well as
a filter, and it is well worthwhile learning the appropriate commands to
do this with your editor. You may want to supply the <STRONG>-q</STRONG> flag to
prevent error messages regarding incorrect syntax, since errors may be
obvious in the indentation of the reformatted text. If you do not
use the <STRONG>-q</STRONG> flag, you will need to use the undo keys in case
an error message appears on the screen.</P>
<P>For example, within the vim editor it is only necessary to select the
text by any of the text selection methods, and then issue the command
!perltidy in command mode. Thus, an entire file can be formatted
using</P>
<PRE>
:%!perltidy -q</PRE>
<P>
<H2><A NAME="summary">Summary</A></H2>
<P>That's all you need to know to get started using perltidy. You will
want to delete unwanted files in the temporary directory created in this
tutorial. Additional special features and capabilities can be found in
the manual pages for perltidy.</P>
<P>We hope that perltidy makes perl programming a little more fun.
Please check the perltidy
web site <A HREF="http://perltidy.sourceforge.net">http://perltidy.sourceforge.net</A> occasionally
for updates.</P>
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