I've recently started using Perl for text wrangling instead of PHP -- it started after much of my PHP included a lot of preg_replace and preg_match calls, which got me wondering...

There's a certain satisfaction I get from perl that I don't really get from other languages. There's something about the density that makes it quite readable, at least for the author. Here's a script I wrote to automatically add a new build configuration, based on an existing build configuration, with some modifications, to a given .dsp (VC6 project file):

#!/usr/bin/perl
$sp = "Win32 Release";
$np = "Win32 Nitpicker";
$spd="Release";
$npd="Nitpicker";
$spdir="/Release/";
$npdir="/Nitpicker/";
$libfile = "../../nitpicker/libcmt_nitpick.lib";
while (<>)
{
  chomp;
  s/\r$//;
  s/\n$//;
   

  print $_ . "\r\n";
  if (/^!ELSEIF .*$sp".*$/ || /^!IF .*$sp".*$/)
  {
    s/^!IF/!ELSEIF/;
    s/$sp/$np/;
    @nc = ($_);
    while (<>)
    {
      chomp;
      s/\r$//;
      s/\n$//;
      if (/^!/)
      {
        my $tmp=$_;
        foreach (@nc)
        {
	  s/$spd/$npd/g;
	  s/$spdir/$npdir/g;
	  if (/^# ADD BASE CPP/)
	  {
	    s/\/Z\S *//;
	    s/\/YX *//;
	    s/\/FR *//;
	    s/\/FD *//;
	    s/$/ \/FR \/FD \/Zi/;
	  }
          if (/^# ADD CPP/)
	  {
	    s/\/Z\S *//;
	    s/\/M\S *//;
	    s/\/O\S *//;
	    s/\/FR *//;
	    s/\/FD *//;
	    s/$/ \/FR \/FD \/Zi \/MT \/Ot \/Og \/D "DEBUG_TIGHT_ALLOC"/;
	  }
	  if (/^# ADD LINK32/)
	  {
	    s/^# ADD LINK32 /# ADD LINK32 $libfile /;
	    s/\/debug *//;
	    s/\/out:/\/nodefaultlib:"LIBCMT" \/out:/;
	    s/$/ \/debug/;
	  }
	  if (/^# ADD BASE LINK32/)
	  {
	    s/\/debug *//;
	    s/\/map *//;
	    s/\/dll /\/dll \/debug /;
	    s/$/ \/fixed:no/;
	  }
          print $_ . "\r\n";
        }
        print $tmp;
        last;
      }
      print $_ . "\r\n";
      push(@nc,$_);
    }
  }
  if (/^!MESSAGE.*$sp".*$/ || /^# Name ".*$sp" *$/)
  {
    s/$sp/$np/;
    print $_ . "\r\n";
  }
}

In case anybody is interested, Nitpicker is something we've been working on that is similar to Electric Fence or other memory debuggers, but better suited for our workflow/design/etc. We'll probably GPL it once it matures.