ActiveState’s Komodo is to Perl what Script Debugger is to AppleScript. It’s a full IDE for Perl, Python, Ruby, and other non-Apple/Microsoft languages. They have a free version.
Not to dismiss BBEdit – I couldn’t live without that tool either. But for development work, specialized tools like Script Debugger and Komodo can make a developer’s life a lot easier.
From:
<applescript-users-bounces+djacopille=email@hidden> on behalf of debt <email@hidden>
Date: Tuesday, March 14, 2017 at 11:30 AM
To: AppleScript Users <email@hidden>
Subject: Re: Run Perl Source Text Directly from AppleScript – List AppleScript Library Handlers
On Mar 12, 2017, at 8:23 PM, Christopher Stone <email@hidden> wrote:
Most notably I added the source ~/.profile command and tweaked the Perl code slightly.
It’s nice to see someone else on this list using Perl, even though 5.12 is pretty old at this point. Is that the version that comes with Sierra? If so, Apple should be ashamed of themselves.
:( Perl’s already up to 5.24.1, and version 5.26 is due out shortly.
I hope you don’t mind, but I would add a couple of things to your script, especially for people who aren’t well versed in Perl. The first would be to add
to let you know when and where things go wrong. Especially when embedded within AppleScript, any errors in the Perl code may be hard to spot by eye. Also, anyone using Perl 5.10 or lower (God forbid!) will want to add
to catch any Perl syntax errors.
Although I like the fact that Perl code can be embedded within AppleScript, I personally don’t like doing it because there’s too much escaping of the characters going on which makes it look ugly, IMHO. Using BBEdit will give you syntax
highlighting and it's compare documents feature is second to none (they even have a free version now). It’s almost like a Script Debugger for other languages. I couldn’t operate without either one now.