Perl Needs Better Tools
by Matisse Enzer
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Pages: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
A Code-Assist Editor
Suppose that you have just typed in an object reference and want to call a method on the object, but you are not sure what the method name is. Wouldn't it be nice if the editor popped up a menu listing all of the methods available for that object? It might look something like Figure 4.
Figure 4. Automatic code completion
In this example, the IDE is able to figure out which class the object
$q is an instance of and lists the names of the available methods.
If you type a p, then the list shows only the method names
beginning with p. If you type pa, then the list shows
only the param() and parse_params() methods.
Excellent Refactoring Support
The easier it is to do refactoring, the more often people will do it. The following list contains the most common refactorings. Your personal list will probably be a little different. All of these are things you can do "manually," but the idea is to make them into one or two-click operations so that you will do them much more often. (For a extensive list of refactoring operations, see Martin Fowler's alphabetical list of refactorings.)
Extract Subroutine/Method
The IDE should create a new subroutine using the selected code and replace the selected code with a call to the new subroutine, with the proper parameters. Here's an example of using the Extract Subroutine refactoring from Eclipse/EPIC (which uses the Devel::Refactor module).
First, you select a chunk of code to turn into a new subroutine, and then select Extract Subroutine from a context menu. You then get the a dialog box asking for the name of the new subroutine (shown in Figure 5).
Figure 5. Code before Extract Subroutine
refactoring
The IDE replaces the selected code with a call to the new subroutine, making reasonable guesses about the parameters and return values (Figure 6). You may need to clean up the result manually.
Figure 6. Code after Extract
Subroutine
Figure 7 shows the new subroutine created by the IDE. In this case, it needs no changes, but sometimes you will need to adjust the parameters and/or return value(s).
Figure 7. The new subroutine created
by Extract Subroutine
Ideally, the editor should prompt you to replace similar chunks of code with calls to the new subroutine.
