Provided by: perltidy_20120701-1_all 
NAME
Perl::Tidy - Parses and beautifies perl source
SYNOPSIS
use Perl::Tidy;
Perl::Tidy::perltidy(
source => $source,
destination => $destination,
stderr => $stderr,
argv => $argv,
perltidyrc => $perltidyrc,
logfile => $logfile,
errorfile => $errorfile,
formatter => $formatter, # callback object (see below)
dump_options => $dump_options,
dump_options_type => $dump_options_type,
prefilter => $prefilter_coderef,
postfilter => $postfilter_coderef,
);
DESCRIPTION
This module makes the functionality of the perltidy utility available to perl scripts.
Any or all of the input parameters may be omitted, in which case the @ARGV array will be
used to provide input parameters as described in the perltidy(1) man page.
For example, the perltidy script is basically just this:
use Perl::Tidy;
Perl::Tidy::perltidy();
The module accepts input and output streams by a variety of methods. The following list
of parameters may be any of the following: a filename, an ARRAY reference, a SCALAR
reference, or an object with either a getline or print method, as appropriate.
source - the source of the script to be formatted
destination - the destination of the formatted output
stderr - standard error output
perltidyrc - the .perltidyrc file
logfile - the .LOG file stream, if any
errorfile - the .ERR file stream, if any
dump_options - ref to a hash to receive parameters (see below),
dump_options_type - controls contents of dump_options
dump_getopt_flags - ref to a hash to receive Getopt flags
dump_options_category - ref to a hash giving category of options
dump_abbreviations - ref to a hash giving all abbreviations
The following chart illustrates the logic used to decide how to treat a parameter.
ref($param) $param is assumed to be:
----------- ---------------------
undef a filename
SCALAR ref to string
ARRAY ref to array
(other) object with getline (if source) or print method
If the parameter is an object, and the object has a close method, that close method will
be called at the end of the stream.
source
If the source parameter is given, it defines the source of the input stream. If an
input stream is defined with the source parameter then no other source filenames may
be specified in the @ARGV array or argv parameter.
destination
If the destination parameter is given, it will be used to define the file or memory
location to receive output of perltidy.
stderr
The stderr parameter allows the calling program to redirect to a file the output of
what would otherwise go to the standard error output device. Unlike many other
parameters, $stderr must be a file or file handle; it may not be a reference to a
SCALAR or ARRAY.
perltidyrc
If the perltidyrc file is given, it will be used instead of any .perltidyrc
configuration file that would otherwise be used.
argv
If the argv parameter is given, it will be used instead of the @ARGV array. The argv
parameter may be a string, a reference to a string, or a reference to an array. If it
is a string or reference to a string, it will be parsed into an array of items just as
if it were a command line string.
dump_options
If the dump_options parameter is given, it must be the reference to a hash. In this
case, the parameters contained in any perltidyrc configuration file will be placed in
this hash and perltidy will return immediately. This is equivalent to running
perltidy with --dump-options, except that the perameters are returned in a hash rather
than dumped to standard output. Also, by default only the parameters in the
perltidyrc file are returned, but this can be changed (see the next parameter). This
parameter provides a convenient method for external programs to read a perltidyrc
file. An example program using this feature, perltidyrc_dump.pl, is included in the
distribution.
Any combination of the dump_ parameters may be used together.
dump_options_type
This parameter is a string which can be used to control the parameters placed in the
hash reference supplied by dump_options. The possible values are 'perltidyrc'
(default) and 'full'. The 'full' parameter causes both the default options plus any
options found in a perltidyrc file to be returned.
dump_getopt_flags
If the dump_getopt_flags parameter is given, it must be the reference to a hash. This
hash will receive all of the parameters that perltidy understands and flags that are
passed to Getopt::Long. This parameter may be used alone or with the dump_options
flag. Perltidy will exit immediately after filling this hash. See the demo program
perltidyrc_dump.pl for example usage.
dump_options_category
If the dump_options_category parameter is given, it must be the reference to a hash.
This hash will receive a hash with keys equal to all long parameter names and values
equal to the title of the corresponding section of the perltidy manual. See the demo
program perltidyrc_dump.pl for example usage.
dump_abbreviations
If the dump_abbreviations parameter is given, it must be the reference to a hash.
This hash will receive all abbreviations used by Perl::Tidy. See the demo program
perltidyrc_dump.pl for example usage.
prefilter
A code reference that will be applied to the source before tidying. It is expected to
take the full content as a string in its input, and output the transformed content.
postfilter
A code reference that will be applied to the tidied result before outputting. It is
expected to take the full content as a string in its input, and output the transformed
content.
Note: A convenient way to check the function of your custom prefilter and postfilter
code is to use the --notidy option, first with just the prefilter and then with both
the prefilter and postfilter. See also the file filter_example.pl in the perltidy
distribution.
NOTES ON FORMATTING PARAMETERS
Parameters which control formatting may be passed in several ways: in a .perltidyrc
configuration file, in the perltidyrc parameter, and in the argv parameter.
The -syn (--check-syntax) flag may be used with all source and destination streams except
for standard input and output. However data streams which are not associated with a
filename will be copied to a temporary file before being be passed to Perl. This use of
temporary files can cause somewhat confusing output from Perl.
EXAMPLES
The perltidy script itself is a simple example, and several examples are given in the
perltidy distribution.
The following example passes perltidy a snippet as a reference to a string and receives
the result back in a reference to an array.
use Perl::Tidy;
# some messy source code to format
my $source = <<'EOM';
use strict;
my @editors=('Emacs', 'Vi '); my $rand = rand();
print "A poll of 10 random programmers gave these results:\n";
foreach(0..10) {
my $i=int ($rand+rand());
print " $editors[$i] users are from Venus" . ", " .
"$editors[1-$i] users are from Mars" .
"\n";
}
EOM
# We'll pass it as ref to SCALAR and receive it in a ref to ARRAY
my @dest;
perltidy( source => \$source, destination => \@dest );
foreach (@dest) {print}
Using the formatter Callback Object
The formatter parameter is an optional callback object which allows the calling program to
receive tokenized lines directly from perltidy for further specialized processing. When
this parameter is used, the two formatting options which are built into perltidy
(beautification or html) are ignored. The following diagram illustrates the logical flow:
|-- (normal route) -> code beautification
caller->perltidy->|-- (-html flag ) -> create html
|-- (formatter given)-> callback to write_line
This can be useful for processing perl scripts in some way. The parameter $formatter in
the perltidy call,
formatter => $formatter,
is an object created by the caller with a "write_line" method which will accept and
process tokenized lines, one line per call. Here is a simple example of a "write_line"
which merely prints the line number, the line type (as determined by perltidy), and the
text of the line:
sub write_line {
# This is called from perltidy line-by-line
my $self = shift;
my $line_of_tokens = shift;
my $line_type = $line_of_tokens->{_line_type};
my $input_line_number = $line_of_tokens->{_line_number};
my $input_line = $line_of_tokens->{_line_text};
print "$input_line_number:$line_type:$input_line";
}
The complete program, perllinetype, is contained in the examples section of the source
distribution. As this example shows, the callback method receives a parameter
$line_of_tokens, which is a reference to a hash of other useful information. This example
uses these hash entries:
$line_of_tokens->{_line_number} - the line number (1,2,...)
$line_of_tokens->{_line_text} - the text of the line
$line_of_tokens->{_line_type} - the type of the line, one of:
SYSTEM - system-specific code before hash-bang line
CODE - line of perl code (including comments)
POD_START - line starting pod, such as '=head'
POD - pod documentation text
POD_END - last line of pod section, '=cut'
HERE - text of here-document
HERE_END - last line of here-doc (target word)
FORMAT - format section
FORMAT_END - last line of format section, '.'
DATA_START - __DATA__ line
DATA - unidentified text following __DATA__
END_START - __END__ line
END - unidentified text following __END__
ERROR - we are in big trouble, probably not a perl script
Most applications will be only interested in lines of type CODE. For another example,
let's write a program which checks for one of the so-called naughty matching variables
"&`", $&, and "$'", which can slow down processing. Here is a write_line, from the
example program find_naughty.pl, which does that:
sub write_line {
# This is called back from perltidy line-by-line
# We're looking for $`, $&, and $'
my ( $self, $line_of_tokens ) = @_;
# pull out some stuff we might need
my $line_type = $line_of_tokens->{_line_type};
my $input_line_number = $line_of_tokens->{_line_number};
my $input_line = $line_of_tokens->{_line_text};
my $rtoken_type = $line_of_tokens->{_rtoken_type};
my $rtokens = $line_of_tokens->{_rtokens};
chomp $input_line;
# skip comments, pod, etc
return if ( $line_type ne 'CODE' );
# loop over tokens looking for $`, $&, and $'
for ( my $j = 0 ; $j < @$rtoken_type ; $j++ ) {
# we only want to examine token types 'i' (identifier)
next unless $$rtoken_type[$j] eq 'i';
# pull out the actual token text
my $token = $$rtokens[$j];
# and check it
if ( $token =~ /^\$[\`\&\']$/ ) {
print STDERR
"$input_line_number: $token\n";
}
}
}
This example pulls out these tokenization variables from the $line_of_tokens hash
reference:
$rtoken_type = $line_of_tokens->{_rtoken_type};
$rtokens = $line_of_tokens->{_rtokens};
The variable $rtoken_type is a reference to an array of token type codes, and $rtokens is
a reference to a corresponding array of token text. These are obviously only defined for
lines of type CODE. Perltidy classifies tokens into types, and has a brief code for each
type. You can get a complete list at any time by running perltidy from the command line
with
perltidy --dump-token-types
In the present example, we are only looking for tokens of type i (identifiers), so the for
loop skips past all other types. When an identifier is found, its actual text is checked
to see if it is one being sought. If so, the above write_line prints the token and its
line number.
The formatter feature is relatively new in perltidy, and further documentation needs to be
written to complete its description. However, several example programs have been written
and can be found in the examples section of the source distribution. Probably the best
way to get started is to find one of the examples which most closely matches your
application and start modifying it.
For help with perltidy's pecular way of breaking lines into tokens, you might run, from
the command line,
perltidy -D filename
where filename is a short script of interest. This will produce filename.DEBUG with
interleaved lines of text and their token types. The -D flag has been in perltidy from
the beginning for this purpose. If you want to see the code which creates this file, it
is "write_debug_entry" in Tidy.pm.
EXPORT
&perltidy
CREDITS
Thanks to Hugh Myers who developed the initial modular interface to perltidy.
VERSION
This man page documents Perl::Tidy version 20120701.
LICENSE
This package is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of
the "GNU General Public License".
Please refer to the file "COPYING" for details.
AUTHOR
Steve Hancock
perltidy at users.sourceforge.net
SEE ALSO
The perltidy(1) man page describes all of the features of perltidy. It can be found at
http://perltidy.sourceforge.net.