Thank you for your comments.
To answer various questions/suggestions/comments:
- It will be for rewriting Perl, exclusively, using PPI, with Perl-centric
rules, so Code is not an appropriate namespace. (I don't think the PPI
namespace is appropriate, since in theory, it could use something else.
Note also Perl::Tidy and Perl::Critic.)
- It will be for modifying actual script/module files, as opposed to
modifying code on the fly, so Filter is not an appropriate namespace.
- Perl::Transform is good name, but I think means the same thing as
Rewrite. Since the latter is shorter, it wins. (I don't like the way
Perl::XForm looks, and that makes it look like it has something to do
with forms in X-Windows.)
- I'm thinking Perl::Rewrite is the best name, for now, since it rewrites
code using PPI. Bit by bit I will develop it on GitHub
https://github.com/robrwo/Perl-Rewrite - for now it just has some stub
rules, until I flesh out the interface etc.
Regards,
Rob
On Sat, Aug 31, 2013 at 6:11 AM, Robert Rothenberg r...@cpan.org wrote:
At $work, I've been writing scripts that use PPI to munge massive amounts
of legacy code. So far simple things like changing die/warn to croak/carp,
ensuring all modules specify a minimum version number, or changing print
foo\n so say foo, etc. It seems worthy enough to turn this code into a
CPAN module.
My thoughts are that it would use a plugin system for specific tasks, and
a command-line script that takes plugin names as arguments, so basically
you'd run the script to apply various tasks to a set of modules or scripts
in a directory, perhaps using a configuration file for each of the plugins.
The early version would have simple plugins, but there's no reason why
more complex plugins couldn't be written (e.g. to translate a non-Moose
class into something Moose-like), or other things like optimize certain
kinds of expressions.
I'm well aware of the limitations of doing this automatically. But the
idea is to get a script that can do the bulk of the tedious rewriting, so
that a human can clean up the mistakes. It's meant to be run by intelligent
people who use things like version control and tests.
So what should it be called? I'm thinking Perl::Rewrite is the best name.
Alternatives are:
- Perl::Refactor - except refactoring has a technical meaning that I
don't think applies
- Perl::Modernize - except that one might want a plugin that translates
newer-style code into older code
- Perl::Munge - except that it connotes sloppiness
- Perl::Snorft - no, just kidding I have no idea what that means.
- ?
Thanks,
Rob
