Announcing Perl-based automation of Notepad++

[Michael Vincent]

I use NppConsole (modified) to get a PowerShell console in a N++ dockable. I also wrote App::PerlShell which provides a REPL-like shell-like interactive Perl. So a quick Batch script called “nppplsh.bat”:

@echo off

plsh -P Win32::Mechanize::NotepadPlusPlus -p "npp> "

… and now from my NppConsole, I can run nppplsh.bat and then:

PS MVINCENT ~ > nppplsh.bat

npp> print notepad()->getCurrentFilename();
C:\Users\mvincent\source\pynetsim\Notes.md
npp> print notepad()->getNumberOpenFiles();
8
npp> print notepad()->getNumberOpenFiles(1);
6
npp> print editor->getSelText();
This is the text I selected for the 
plsh and Win32::Mechanize::NotepadPlusPlus demo!
npp> exit
PS MVINCENT ~ >

Cheers.

[Michael Vincent]

Perhaps an even more interesting demo using the same selected text from the previous demo and some code from a recent post, I can get the MD5 hash of each line:

PS MVINCENT ~\source\pynetsim > nppplsh

npp> use Digest::MD5;

npp> $eol = ("\r\n", "\r", "\n")[editor->getEOLMode()];

npp> @lines = split /$eol/, editor->getSelText();

npp> for $line (@lines) {
More? $ctx = Digest::MD5->new();
More? $ctx->add($line);
More? printf qq(%32.32s\n), $ctx->hexdigest();
More? }
eae987951e7acc2d994c4d1d279f7112
a00f5ac7854397bcac1c348685dc429c

npp>

Cheers.

[PeterJones]

@Michael-Vincent,

I had never really gotten into REPL – never found one that I liked enough to frequently use – but I think App::PerlShell might be the one that starts me down that road, especially with this solution for NppConsole to embed the REPL in Notepad++. (If I ever get around to the v2.0 features – specifically, writing a wrapper Notepad++ plugin and thus enabling the notifications – I will probably try to use a combination of NppConsole as the starting code and @Ekopalypse’s experiments with embedding perl in a plugin, and include App::PerlShell as the default REPL for the plugin. That said, I have to get from early versions into a sold v1.0 before I work on v2.0 feastures. :-) )

Speaking of working toward v1.0: I am working on documenting the hashes that are used for holding the message name/value pairs, and the argument name/value pairs (equivalent to PythonScript’s enum documentation). But I’m wondering if I should change from having just a couple hashes with messages and message-arguments intertwined (%nppm, %nppidm, and %scimsg) into having a different named hash for the messages compared to the arguments (pythonscript uses a separate enum/class for each type of argument). Or maybe go the other direction, and have a big hash-of-hashes like %enum = ( NPPMSG => { … } , SCINTILLAMSG => { … } , MENUCMD => { FILE_CLOSE => …, …}, … ), so if you were going for the FILE_CLOSE, it would be $enum{MENUCMD}{FILE_CLOSE}.

I had originally kept them as just those three hashes, because that was easy from my convert-.h-to-hash method. But since I’m moving over to manual .pm for the messages/arguments, to allow for easier POD documentation of those hashes, now seems like a good time to make changes to the structure, if it makes sense.

So, if it were up to you(*), would you prefer just the enums as they are, split into multiple separate hash variables, or combined into one mega hash-of-hashs? Or should I just do all three (I could easily build the existing-three out of individual variables, and the mega hash-of-hashes could actually just embed the individual variables.

*: “up to you”, where “you” is defined as @Michael-Vincent , or anyone else who is likely to use Win32::Mechanize::NotepadPlusPlus as more than a one-or-two-time curiosity. :-)

[Michael Vincent]

@PeterJones said in Announcing Perl-based automation of Notepad++:

So, if it were up to you(*)

Let me give it think. My first instinct is to keep them separate instead of a single big hash-of-hash. To me that just makes more sense grouping N++, messages and Scintilla with their like instead of mixing.

More on App::PerlShell - if you read the POD, there are other REPL’s for Perl that excel at certain aspects of REPL - one duplicates Python look and feel, another uses PPI for correct Perl parsing at the expense of many dependencies, etc. I wanted one that behaved more like a shell (e.g., bash, Powershell) but took Perl commands and none did that. That said, my implementation is probably pretty poor, rough around the edges and makes a multitude of assumptions. All this to say, happy for you to use it, that’s what it’s there for … but “production ready” it may not be like say Devel::REPL.

Cheers.

[PeterJones]

v0.002 released to CPAN

• Reorganize the hash variables for easier and clearer use going forward (#13)
• editor->getLine() on an empty line will now correctly return an empty string, not “\0” (fixed #14)
• update API for getNumberOpenFiles to correctly use the constants (#17)
• add notepad->getNppVar() for accessing the “user variables”, like FULL_CURRENT_PATH and CURRENT_WORD (#19)
• improve documentation internal links (#20)
• make the editor->hwnd() a public method (instead of using editor()->{_hwnd})
• make the notepad->hwnd() a public method (instead of using notepad()->{_hwnd})
• add helper editor->getEOLString(): convert EOL Mode integer to a string
• editor->getFileEndPosition(): gives the end position of the whole document
• improve test coverage: add encoding names and getLanguageName coverage to npp-buffer.t
• examples/ folder: adding more example usages
• improve Editor documentation on ->findText and some other methods, and clean up set/get pairs, so they share the same information
• improve Notepad documentation, especially fixing the link for menuCmdID source file

[PeterJones]

v0.003 released to CPAN

The user-centric changes that were made:

• some of the Scintilla v4.2.0 messages that were implemented in Notepad++ v7.8 were missing, so add them (#29: thanks @Michael-Vincent for pointing this out!)
• runPluginsCommand() = fixed command cache feature and improved test (#30)
• added version notes, to say which messages and “enums” (hashes/keys) require NPP v7.8 (because these are the Scintilla v4.2.0 updates)

I keep trying to improve this, and make it more usable. Suggestions and bug reports welcome.

[Michael Vincent]

@PeterJones

Saw your N++ commit updating Perl keywords and the autocomplete API. BRAVO!!! I had an updated perl.xml autocomplete, but yours is way more complete and I’ve started using it this morning to test.

Thanks for keeping Perl updated in N++!!

Cheers.

[PeterJones]

This post is deleted!

[PeterJones]

@Michael-Vincent,

I was trying to figure out if I had a place to reply with that link, or whether I’d have to create a new post. I guess here was as good a place as any. Since Don accepted the PR, it should be in the next official release! (This is my first contribution to the main Notepad++, rather than just documentation or UDL, so I’m happy about that!)

I basically wrote a regex to trim out just the functions (=item) and the brief summary line (=for Pod::Functions) from perlfunc.pod, then used another few regex to merge those together into the auto-complete format; that way, I am hopeful I didn’t miss any functions from v5.30.

[Michael Vincent]

@PeterJones said in Announcing Perl-based automation of Notepad++:

I basically wrote a regex

I did mine by hand. Happy to throw that away for your more complete and automated creation solution. I’ll be grabbing 7.8.7 when officially released.

Cheers.

[PeterJones]

v0.005 released to CPAN

The user-centric changes that were made:

• replace %ENCODINGKEY with %BUFFERENCODING, because the old hash had wrong values that didn’t match getEncoding()'s return values (#50)
• add setEncoding() command to call NPPM_SETBUFFERENCODING as the logical pair to getEncoding() (#51)

I had apparently missed announcing v0.004 and bugfix 0.004001, so for historical purposes, quoting from my CHANGES file

v0.004001 2020-Jun-20

• fix bug in notepad->prompt(), which only used two of the three
  arguments, in wrong order (#47); test suite verifies default
  values for title and default when they aren’t used
• added new examples/pasteSpecial.pl to show how to paste a
  clipboard entry other than CF_TEXT into Notepad++

v0.004 2020-Jun-04

• fix bug in propertyNames() which deleted final char (#45)
• implemented helper methods: forEachLine, deleteLine, replaceWholeLine,
  replaceLine, flash, getWord, getCurrentWord, getUserLineSelection,
  getUserCharSelection (#15)
• make setTarget an alias of setTargetRange, and write an alias of
  addText, for PythonScript compatibility (#15)
• implemented new auto-wrapper to get searchInTarget and similar calls
  to work right (#42)
• fixed replaceTarget() and replaceTargetRE() replacing target with the
  empty string (#41)
• fixed length bug in getTargetText() (#40)
• fixed bug in editor->setText(‘’) which had empty strings
  cause crash (#39)

[PeterJones]

v0.007 released to CPAN

• Update Editor object for the Notepad++ 7.9.4 update to Scintilla v4.4.6

And, again, I had forgotten to announce last month:

v0.006 2021-Mar-06

• add getSettingsOnCloudPath() with test (#54)
• add getLineNumberWidthMode(), setLineNumberWidthMode(), and the %LINENUMWIDTH enumeration with test (#54 addendeum)
• test suite bug: with v7.9.1 and newer, replaceTargetText() changes the selection/getTargetText() value, so update the readback to be version agnostic (#57)
• documentation error: fox %NPPIDM description in Notepad.pm (#53)
• meta fix: make test suite pass on cpantesters smoke testers, even if smoke tester machine doesn’t have Notepad++, or has an old, incompatible version (#56)

v0.006001 2021-Mar-07

• meta fix: turn off the auto-download on smoke tester machines, because it was causing fails

[PeterJones]

v0.008 released to CPAN

• add notepad->showDocList, notepad->isDocListShown, and notepad->docListDisableColumn for working with the Document List panel (previously “Doc Switcher” panel)
• incorporate the new messages and menu commands thru v8.1.4 (#80)
• add notepad->getStatusBar(), which will get the text of one of the sections of the status bar (#65)
• add notepad->getDebugInfo(), which (for new-enough Notepad++) includes the ‘Command line’ entry from Debug Info (#74)
• add %WINMSGBOX for use with notepad->messageBox (#73)