combining emacs' cperl-mode formatting with Perltidy

[LanX]

Hi

I love the instant formatting features emacs gives me when typing Perl, but they can't cope with perltidy's detailed control.

So I would like to run perltidy from time to time to update my text buffer (anything less frequent than with every return hit)

Problem is to have a compatible and "tolerant" config, where both formatter don't start messing the result of the other one.

Did anyone already try to achieve this somehow?

[duelafn]

Running perltidy using an Idle Timer should get perltidy to run at a reasonable interval and, I would think, help with formatting conflicts. I'd expect perltidy to be guaranteed to run after emacs did any alignment it intended to do since it will only run while "idle".

[LanX]

Sure but I don't want the formatting to flip flop between two stiles...

Like the column where the comment starts...

Maybe one first step is to write a perltidy config parser which translates to emacs settings.

Another one would be a perltidy background demon to avoid the start overhead.

I should have mentioned that emacs is more line oriented while perltidy processes the whole file...

[duelafn]

Will they do that much fighting even if they are configured differently? I don't think cperl-mode changes indentation just by typing and certainly not anything further than the current line... at least I don't see anything in my cperl config that disables any such things. cperl is happy to allow me to edit a line or comment that it thinks in not properly aligned without changing the alignment. (that's actually a thing that drives me crazy in some other modes - they change the alignment when I type a paren or semi-colon.)