Which editor for Perl hacking are you using

[John Bokma]

Please no editor war, but I am curious, what's the editor of choice you're
using to write Perl, and why (if you want to share).

I am currently using Textpad, but in the very near future I am moving to
GNU/Linux. I've some experience with using vi(m) for editing work, and
have printed both the emacs and vim manual, but not sure which one to
start reading first.

I've had a short peek at Komodo Edit, but considered the start up time way
too high. Ages ago I had a peek at Eclipse, but not sure if I am the IDE
kind of guy (I manage quite ok with a "perldoc" keymark in Firefox, and
perldoc on the cli most of the time).

 

[RedGrittyBrick]

Please no editor war, but I am curious, what's the editor of choice you're
using to write Perl,
vim

and why (if you want to share).

a) It was the Unix editor I learned concurrent with learning Perl.
b) It's good.
c) It's available on most operating systems.
d) Inertia.

If I'd started with Emacs I imagine I'd still be using Emacs.

I am currently using Textpad, but in the very near future I am moving to
GNU/Linux. I've some experience with using vi(m) for editing work, and
have printed both the emacs and vim manual, but not sure which one to
start reading first.

If you've some experience with vim, I suggest you continue on that path.

I've had a short peek at Komodo Edit, but considered the start up time way
too high. Ages ago I had a peek at Eclipse, but not sure if I am the IDE
kind of guy (I manage quite ok with a "perldoc" keymark in Firefox, and
perldoc on the cli most of the time).

I use Eclipse for Java but I see no need to use an IDE for Perl. YMMV.

 

[Josef Moellers]

Please no editor war, but I am curious, what's the editor of choice you're
using to write Perl,
vim

and why (if you want to share).

I started with ed, dispising full-screen-editors, then learned that vi
was like ed but full-screen (and it was able to solve a maze ;-), now
I'm using vim.

I am currently using Textpad, but in the very near future I am moving to
GNU/Linux. I've some experience with using vi(m) for editing work, and
have printed both the emacs and vim manual, but not sure which one to
start reading first.

I've had a short peek at Komodo Edit, but considered the start up time way
too high. Ages ago I had a peek at Eclipse, but not sure if I am the IDE
kind of guy (I manage quite ok with a "perldoc" keymark in Firefox, and
perldoc on the cli most of the time).

I sometimes wonder whether using an IDE would help. As the name implies
it's an *integrated* development environment, where you have the
documentation readily available and some help in getting the syntax
right. But I'm too much of a "toolbox" person to be using these big,
monolithic beasts. Maybe that will change.

Happy holidays,

Josef

 

[gamo]

Please no editor war, but I am curious, what's the editor of choice you're
using to write Perl, and why (if you want to share).

JED is a wonderful editor. Especially in EDT mode.
If you try it and learn how to use the numeric keypad
to operate, you will be assimilated.

 

[Pavel Lepin]

Please no editor war...

I'll specifically mention then that there is an awful lot of
good editors and IDEs of all stripes out there, and I
imagine most of them would work well for writing in Perl.

but I am curious, what's the editor of choice you're using
to write Perl...
gvim

and why (if you want to share).

It does everything I need from a text editor, it does it
well, it's lightweight, powerful, ubiquitous, and good for
reducing repetitive strain injury due to it's non-reliance
on chords, and most features being invokable without moving
your hands away from the home row.

elisp sounds like a wonderful idea, but I'm too lazy to move
to a different editor when I have one that works so well
for me. Getting acquainted with vile is on my TODO-list,
though.

 

[Michele Dondi]

Please no editor war, but I am curious, what's the editor of choice you're
jed

using to write Perl, and why (if you want to share).

I stumbled upon it. (Long story not worth, but I was searching for
emacs, go figure!)

It suits my needs.

(As someone else also wrote inertia.

It has Borland's IDE's like keybindings which I got used to many years
ago.


Michele

 

[Martijn Lievaart]

Emacs


a) It was the Unix editor I learned concurrent with learning Perl.
Ditto.

b) It's good.
Ditto.

c) It's available on most operating systems.

It's available on all machines I use. Here Vi has an advantage and vim a
slight advantage.

d) Inertia.
Ditto.


If I'd started with Emacs I imagine I'd still be using Emacs.

I hated vi and I hated Emacs. But Emacs let me do what I wanted to do and
vi didn't. Nowadays, there is not much between vim and Emacs, but in
those days there was.

If you've some experience with vim, I suggest you continue on that path.

Learning Emacs is rewarding, but it's learning curve is even steeper than
vim.

Like you I don't have use for an IDE, except as a language aware editor.
With the current crop of IDEs, maybe there is a good one you like. A good
modern IDE should be usuable out of the box, while both vim and Emacs
mean you have some learning and getting used to ahead.

HTH,
M4

 

[Lars Eighner]

Please no editor war, but I am curious, what's the editor of choice you're
using to write Perl, and why (if you want to share).

Joe. What's not to like? Color for just about any language you can think
of, "modeless" so it doesn't have the steep (yeah, I know, really shallow)
learning curve of vi, unlike emacs it is completely customizable so if you
want to avoid cramps in your left hand you can, powerful and easy macros.

 

[De Vliegende Hollander]

The sentient life form John Bokma posted the following:

Please no editor war, but I am curious, what's the editor of choice you're
using to write Perl, and why (if you want to share).

gvim/vim with Perl syntax highlighting.

Very powerful and it's available for many, many platforms, so that I can
always use it.

 

[Joost Diepenmaat]

Please no editor war, but I am curious, what's the editor of choice you're
using to write Perl, and why (if you want to share).

The last two years I've been using emacs exclusively (I've used it on
and off for much longer) and forced myself to really get to know
it. This takes time, but IMHO it's definitely worth it.

I'm also working on my Lisp knowledge, so having an editor that's
programmable* in Lisp is cool.

If you want to try emacs for perl hacking, make sure you use cperl-mode
instead of perl-mode. Other cool things I've found useful:

additional minor modes - the following work with many major modes, not
just perl:

compile-mode: run your perl code from emacs and jump to errors / warnings.

imenu-mode: adds a pulldown menu with package/function declarations in
the current file. Very simple but useful if you want a short file
overview/navigation and haven't got to grips with all the keyboard
commands.

outline-mode: takes the idea of imenu-mode but lets you fold/move
packages and functions around. Very useful when you've got a large file
and you want to have an overview of the file's structure / group related
functions together / move to some other part of the file. The default
keyboard commands are too complex, though. You really want to set them up
differently.

cedet: makes emacs look more like an IDE: adds buffers with speedbar /
file browser / package inspection etc. Also does some auto-completion
though that seems to be tuned more for static languages like C++ / Java.

All of these you can find from EmacsWiki:

http://www.emacswiki.org/
http://www.emacswiki.org/cgi-bin/wiki/PerlLanguage

Just recently I've been looking at Sepia, which IMO could become the
best thing that's happend to perl/emacs in years: real autocompletion,
live inspection etc. Based on the Lisp/Slime interactive development style.

http://search.cpan.org/dist/Sepia/


* This is a huge understatement. Gnu/X Emacsen really aren't
programmable editors. They're environments for running/building
interactive applications that involve text editing.

Joost.

 

[John M. Gamble]

vim

vim and jedit.

I started with ed, dispising full-screen-editors, then learned that vi

Huh, me too (an ed variant but same principle).

was like ed but full-screen (and it was able to solve a maze ;-), now

(*) Maze?

 

[Jürgen Exner]

Please no editor war, but I am curious, what's the editor of choice you're
using to write Perl, and why (if you want to share).

emacs with CPerl mode.

When I started I could never figure out how to convince vi to do what I
wanted it to do, so I switches to the most powerful editor of the time.
Not to mention that for emacs you can write your own extensions to do
whatever you can imagine.

And now 2 decades later I am still happy with it.

jue

 

[TonyV]

Please no editor war, but I am curious, what's the editor of choice you're
using to write Perl, and why (if you want to share).

I do almost all of my development on Windows, so I use Notepad++.
It's got a good featureset, its free, and handles lots of languages
and file formats. I used to use PSPad for the same reasons, but I
like Notepad++'s customization abilities a little better. PSPad has
an excellent built-in FTP client, but I've started using a copy of
NetDrive to handle mounting FTP connections as filesystems. Much
easier!

I'm rather fickle, though. I might be using something totally
different tomorrow.

 

[Randal L. Schwartz]

John> Please no editor war, but I am curious, what's the editor of choice
John> you're using to write Perl, and why (if you want to share).

That's like saying "Please - no platform wars, but which is better,
XBOX 360, PS/3, or Wii?". Can't be done.

 

[Joost Diepenmaat]

John> Please no editor war, but I am curious, what's the editor of choice
John> you're using to write Perl, and why (if you want to share).

That's like saying "Please - no platform wars, but which is better,
XBOX 360, PS/3, or Wii?". Can't be done.

I think the replies so far have been very polite and informative. In any
case the most objective answer is always "try them all and see what you
like best". From what I've seen here the reply has been to put forth a
good case for why people use what they use, without resorting to flaming
the other opintions, which is probably the best kind of reply you can expect.

Cheers,
Joost.

 

[John Bokma]

John> Please no editor war, but I am curious, what's the editor of
choice John> you're using to write Perl, and why (if you want to
share).

That's like saying "Please - no platform wars, but which is better,
XBOX 360, PS/3, or Wii?". Can't be done.

So far it still goes very good.

And of course I want to know, which editor you are using ;-)

 

[Josef Moellers]

(*) Maze?

'that a question?

There was an ingenious script using :map and yank buffers that was able
to traverse a randomly generated map.

 

[davidfilmer]

Pwhat's the editor of choice you're using to write Perl

For many years it was Nedit. Sometimes Jedit when I didn't have a
proper X-server available. Lately it's Komodo.

and why (if you want to share).

My main computer at work is a Window$ boxen, but I maintain programs
on AIX servers. So I need something that works seamlessly over ssh,
and I personally dislike VI/VIM, and I was intimidated by EMACS (egad
- I'd rather learn LaTeX). Nedit is the only graphical editor that
runs worth a fig over an ssh connection (Kate is nice, but SLOW SLOW
SLOW over a remote connection). Nedit has the best syntax
highlighting for Perl I have ever seen.

Jedit (with the SSH plugin) works OK, but syntax highlighting and
performance (it's Java) leave much to be desired.

Lately I use Komodo. Why? Somebody else (my employer) pays the
bill. If Komodo were free, I bet most of the people in this group
would be using it! Nothing else comes even close. Right now I've got
22 Perl programs on nine different servers open in a Komodo window.
It talks to cvs or svn, and has integrated Perl debugging (on the
remote host), and a boatload of other great stuff. It works
seamlessly through ssh tunnels. If my computer crashes (as Window$
tends to do) then I loose nothing.

 

[rahed]

And of course I want to know, which editor you are using ;-)

I'd say emacs if his agent is gnus.

 

[Michele Dondi]

I think the replies so far have been very polite and informative. In any

Ok: my editor is better than yours. Yours sucks. An impolite and
uninformative answer, eventually!


Michele