How can I prettify Perl code generated by Perl? - perl

Question

I have a test generator written in Perl. It generates tests that connect to a simulator. These tests are themselves written in Perl and connect to the simulator via its API. I would like the generated code to be human-readable, which means I'd like it to be properly indented and formatted. Is there a good way to do it?
Details follow, or you can skip to the actual question below.
This is an example:
my $basic = ABC
TRIGGER => DELAY(
NUM => 500,
),
)
BASIC
my $additional = STATE_IS(
STATE => DEF,
INDEX => 0,
),
ADDITIONAL
I'd like the command ABC to be executed with a delay of 500 (units aren't relevant just now) after I call &event, and the state of index 0 is DEF. Sometimes I'll also want to wait for indeces 1, 2, 3 etc...
For only one index I'd like to see this in my test:
&event(
CMD => ABC
TRIGGER => DELAY(
NUM => 500,
TRIGGER => STATE_IS(
STATE => DEF,
INDEX => 0,
),
),
)
For two indeces I'd like to see:
&event(
CMD => ABC
TRIGGER => DELAY(
NUM => 500,
TRIGGER => STATE_IS(
STATE => DEF,
INDEX => 0,
TRIGGER => STATE_IS(
STATE => DEF,
INDEX => 1,
),
),
),
)
So basically I'm adding a block of:
TRIGGER => STATE_IS(
STATE => DEF,
INDEX => 0,
),
for each index, and the index number changes.
Here's how I'm doing it:
for $i (0..$num_indeces) {
# update the index number
$additional =~ s/(INDEX\s*=>\s*)\d+,/$1 $i,/;
$basic =~ s/(
(\),\s*) # capture sequences of ),
+ # as many as possible
\)\s* # end with ) without a ,
} )/$additional $1/sx; # replace with the additional data
Here's the actual question
The problem here is that the code comes out poorly indented. I'd like to run the resulting $basic through a prettifier like this:
&prettify($basic, "perl");
Which would format it nicely according to Perl's best practices. Is there any good way to do this?

Answer 1

PerlTidy makes your code not only tidy, but really beautiful. You can easily tweak it according to your local coding standards.

Answer 2

I have used this:
use Perl::Tidy;
sub Format {
my $source = shift;
my $result;
Perl::Tidy::perltidy(
source => \$source,
destination => \$result,
argv => [qw(-pbp -nst)]
);
return $result;
}