Apple

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.

Hey Marc,

#!/usr/bin/env perl -sw

use v5.010;

say "Perl version $] is pretty current.";

say "";

say "Isn't it?";

-->

Perl version 5.024001 is pretty current.

Isn't it?

The stock version on Sierra is "Perl version 5.018002".

The use statement is simply a downward limit, and if memory serves 5.010 is the lowest version where “say” is viable. Without such a statement you cannot employ “say”, unless you've made other arrangements.

http://perldoc.perl.org/functions/say.html

I use Macports to keep Perl (and other things) up-to-date on my system.

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

use warnings;

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

use strict;

to catch any Perl syntax errors.

I think you missed this:

/usr/bin/env perl -swf

Note the strict and warnings switches. ;-)

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.

I understand that, but it can be more convenient to have everything encapsulated in one script – particularly if you're distributing it. (Of course a script-bundle is a good alternative in that case.)

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.