[MacPerl] Suggestion for using a Shell to invoke MacPerl

[Tom Fetherston <ranch1@earthlink.net>]

Hi all,

While working on getting SDF to work from the Alpha editor, it occurred to
me that there should be no reason why I couldn't get the Tcl shell built
into Alpha to closely mimic the way perl programs get invoked from a unix
shell. A quick and dirty rewrite of the proc"perlExecuteFile" gave me:


proc perl {path {args {}} } {
    global PerlmodeVars ALPHA scriptFile scriptStart filterHeadLen perlName
    set flags {}

    if {[string length $path]} {
        set perlName [file tail [app::launchBack McPL]]
        if {[string length $perlName]} {

            set ok [regexp {(.*):([^:]*)} $path pathname dirname filename]
            if {$path != [scriptPath]} {
                set filterHeadLen 0
            }

            sendCloseWinName $perlName $perlName
            sendCloseWinName $perlName "Perl Debug"
            if {$PerlmodeVars(perlautoSwitch) || \
              $PerlmodeVars(perluseDebugger)} {
                switchTo $perlName
            } else {
                message "Running file \"$filename\" as Perl script"
                watchCursor
            }

            perlDoScript $perlName $path $args {} $flags

            switchTo $ALPHA

            if {![getMacPerlError]} {
                if {$PerlmodeVars(perlretrieveOutput)} {openPerlOutput}
            }
        } else {
            alertnote "Couldn't run MacPerl"
        }
    } else {
        alertnote "No file specified to execute"
    }
}

Then, using the shell, I entered:
perl "T2:sdf:bin:sdf" -2html "T2:sdf:samples:simple:mydoc.sdf"

and it worked.

Proc 'perl' should be easily modifyable to handle things more like a normal
shell call (eg single quotes instead of Tcl's double, use sdf instead of a
full path, etc). It might even be possible to fake up pipes!

I'm passing this on in hopes of getting suggestions on what you would like
to see in this and how it should act.

Note that in this version Tcl quoting was needed, should I rewrite to
handle singles? Don't shell invocations pass a line to the shell first and
then use the expanded line to make the call?

The programs that are visible to perl without a complete pathname depend on
the settings of Libraries in MacPerl Preferences, is there an eay way to
query MacPerl for these settings so Tcl could expand a partial name to an
existing one in its source path?

I've asked the list about pipes in MacPerl and never got an answer about
wether MacPerl had this capability. Even if it doesn't, shouldn't it be
possible to buffer the output of one perl program and then get another to
use that as input (or am I misunderstanding what pipes are?).

Anything else I should include/consider?

Tom




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